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‘^THE ENGEISUMAN HALTED AT THE THKESHOED. HIS EYE, PASSING KAPIDLY OVEK THE FIGTHIE 
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t 





THE PARISIANS. 


AUTHOR OF 



“THE COMING RACE,” “ KENELM CHILLINGLY,” “A STRANGE STORY,” 
“MY NOVEL,” “THE CAXTONS,” &C., &C 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY SYDNEY HALL 



NEW YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 

1874. 


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k 




•J 

> J A 

I 


PREFATORY NOTE. 

(BY THE AUTHOR’S SON.) 


The Parisians and Kenelm Chillingly were begun about the same time, and 
had their common origin in the same central idea. That idea first found fan- 
tastic expression in The Coming Race ; and the three books, taken togethei-, 
constitute a special group distinctly apart from all the other works of their 
author. 

The satire of his earlier novels is a protest against false social respectabili- 
ties ; the humor of his later ones is a protest against the disrespect of social 
realities. By the first he sought to promote social sincerity, and the free play 
of personal character ; by the last, to encourage mutual charity and sympathy 
among all classes on whose inter-relation depends the character of society itself. 
But in these three books, his latest fictions, the moral purpose is more definite 
and exclusive. Each of them is an expostulation against what seemed to him 
the perilous popularity of certain social and political theories, or a warning 
against the influence of certain intellectual tendencies upon individual character 
and national life. This purpose, however, though common to the three fictions, 
is worked out in each of them by a different method. The Coming Race is a 
work of pure fancy, and the satire of it is vague and sportive. The outlines 
of a definite purpose are more distinctly drawn in Chillingly — a romance 
which has the source of its effect in a highly wrought imagination. The 
humor and pathos of Chillingly are of a kind incompatible with the design of 
The ParisianSy which is a work of dramatized observation. Chillingly is a 
Romance, The Parisians is a Novel. The subject of Chillingly is psychological, 
that of The Parisians is social. The author’s object in Chillingly being to 
illustrate the effect of “ modern ideas” upon an individual character, he has 
confined his narrative to the biography of that one character. Hence the 
simplicity of plot and small number of dramatis personoCy whereby the work 
gains in height and depth what it loses in breadth of surface. The ParisiaiUy 
on the contrary, is designed to illustrate the effect of “ modern ideas” upon a 
whole community. This novel is therefore panoramic in the profusion and 
variety of figures presented by it to the reader’s imagination. No exclusive 
prominence is vouchsafed to any of these figures. All of them are drawn and 
colored with an equal care, but by means of the bold broad touches necessary 


Vlll 


THE PARISIANS.— PREFATORY NOTE. 


for their effective presentation on a canvas so large and so crowded. Such 
figures are, indeed, but the component features of one great Form, and their 
actions only so many modes of one collective impersonal character, that of the 
Parisian Society of Imperial and Democratic France — a character every where 
present and busy throughout the story, of which it is the real hero or heroine. 
This society was doubtless selected for characteristic illustration as being the 
most advanced in the progress of “ modern ideas.” Thus, for a complete 
perception of its writer’s fundamental purpose, Tlie Parisians should be read 
ill connection with Chillingly^ and these two books 'in connection with The 
Coming Pace. It will then be perceived that, through the medium of alter- 
nate fancy, sentiment, and observation, assisted by humor and passion, these 
three books (in all other respects so different from each other) complete the 
presentation of the same purpose under different aspects, and thereby consti- 
tute a group of fictions which claims a separate place of its own in any 
thoughtful classification of their author’s works. 

One last word to those who will miss from these pages the connecting and* 
completing touches of the master’s hand.* It may be hoped that such a 
disadvantage, though irreparable, is somewhat mitigated by the essential 
character of the work itself.* The aesthetic merit of this kind of novel is in 
the vivacity of a general effect produced by large swift strokes of character ; 
and in such strokes, if they be by a great artist, force and freedom of style 
must still be apparent, even when they are left rough and unfinished. Nor 
can any lack of final verbal correction much diminish the intellectual value 
which many of the more thoughtful passages of the present work derive from 
a long, keen, and practical study of political phenomena, guided by personal 
experience of public life, and enlightened by a large, instinctive knowledge of 
the human heart. 

Such a belief is, at least, encouraged by the private communications sponta- 
neously made, to him who expresses it, by persons of political experience and 
social position in France, who have acknowledged the general accuracy of the 
author’s descriptions, and noticed the suggestive sagacity and penetration of 
his occasional comments on the circumstances and sentiments he describes. 

L. 


See also Note, by the Author’s Son, p. 238. 


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 


They who chance to have read the Coming Mace may perhaps remember 
that I, the adventurous discoverer of the land without a sun, concluded the 
sketch of my adventures by a brief reference to the malady which, though 
giving no perceptible notice of its encroachments, might, in the opinion of my 
medical attendant, prove suddenly fatal. 

I had brought my little book to this somewhat *melancholy close a few years 
before the date of its publication, and, in the mean while, I was induced to 
transfer my residence to Paris, in order to place myself under the care of an 
English physician renowned for his successful treatment of complaints anal- 
ogous to my own. 

I was the more readily persuaded to undertake this journey, partly because 
I enjoyed a familiar acquaintance with the eminent physician referred to, who 
had commenced his career and founded his reputation in the United States, 
partly because I had become a solitary man, the ties of home broken, and dear 
friends of mine were domiciled in Paris, with whom I should be sure of tender 
sympathy and cheerful companionship. I had reason to be thankful for this 

change of residence; the skill of Dr. C soon restored me to health. 

Brought much into contact with various circles of Parisian society, I became 
acquainted with the persons, and a witness of the events, that form the sub- 
stance of the tale I am about to submit to the public, which has treated my 
former book with so generous an indulgence. Sensitively tenacious of that 
character for strict and unalloyed veracity which, I flatter myself, my account 
of the abodes and manners of the Vril-ya has established, I could have wished 
to preserve the following narrative no less jealously guarded than its prede- 
cessor from the vagaries of fancy. But Truth undisguised, never welcome in 
any civilized community above-ground, is exposed at this time to especial 
dangers in Paris; and my life would not be worth an hour’s purchase if I 
exhibited her in puris naturalibus to the eyes of a people wholly unfamiliar- 
ized to a spectacle so indecorous. That care for one’s personal safety, which 
is the first duty of thoughtful man, compels me, therefore, to reconcile the 


X 


THE PARISIANS.— INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 


appearance of la Yerite to the hiens'mnces of the polished society in which 
la Liherte admits no opinion not dressed after the last fashion. 

Attired as fiction, Truth may be peacefully received ; and, despite the neces- 
sity thus imposed by prudence, I indulge the modest hope that I do not in 
these pages unfaithfully represent certain prominent types of the brilliant pop- 
ulation which has invented so many varieties of Koom-Posh ;* and even when 
it appears hopelessly lost in the slough of a Glek-Nas, re-emerges fresh and 
lively as if from an invigorating plunge into the Fountain of Youth. 0 Paris, 
foyer des idees, et ceil du monde ! — animated contrast to the serene tranquillity 
of the Vril-ya, which, nevertheless, thy noisiest philosophers ever pretend to 
make the goal of their desires — of all communities on which shines the sun 
and descend the rains of heaven, fertilizing alike wisdom and folly, virtue and 
vice, in every city men have yet built on this earth, mayest thou, O Paris, be 
the last to brave the wands of the Coming Race and be reduced into cinders 
for the sake of the common good ! 

Tish. 

Paeis, Augmt 28 , 1872 . 


* Koom-Posh, Glek-Nas. For the derivation of these terras and their metaphorical significa- 
tion I must refer the reader to the Coming Race, Chapter XII., on the language of the Vril-ya. 
To those who have not read or have forgotten that historical composition, it may be convenient 
to state briefly that Koom-Posh with the Vril-ya is the name for the government of the many, or 
the ascendency of the most ignorant or hollow, and may be loosely rendered Hollow-Bosh. When 
Koom-Posh degenerates from popular ignorance into the popular ferocity which precedes its de- 
cease, the name for that state of things is Glek-Nas, viz., the universal strife-rot. 


THE PARISIANS. 


BOOK 


CHAPTER I. 

It was a bright day in the early spring of 1869. 

All Paris seemed to have turned out to enjoy 
itself. The Tuileries, the Champs Elyse'es, the 
Bois de Boulogne, swarmed with idlers. A stran- 
ger might have wondered where Toil was at work, 
and in what nook Poverty lurked concealed. A 
millionnaire from the London Exchange, as he 
looked round on the magasins, the equipages, the 
dresses of the women — as he inquired the prices 
in the shops and the rent of apartments — might 
have asked himself, in envious wonder. How on 
earth do those gay Parisians live ? What is their 
fortune ? Where does it come from ? 

As the day declined, many of the scattered 
loungers crowded into the Boulevards ; the cafes 
and restaurants began to light up. 

About this time a young man, who might be 
some five or six and twenty, was walking along 
the Boulevard des Italiens, heeding little the 
throng through which he glided his solitary way : 
there was that in his aspect and bearing which 
caught attention. He looked a somebody, but, 
though unmistakably a Frenchman, not a Paris- 
ian. His dress was not in the prevailing mode 
-^to a practiced eye it betrayed the taste and the 
cut of a provincial tailor. His gait was not that 
of the Parisian — less lounging, more stately ; and, 
unlike the Parisian, he seemed indifferent to the 
gaze of others. 

Nevertheless there was about him that air of 
dignity or distinction which those who are reared 
from their cradle in the pride of birth acquire so 
unconsciously that it seems hereditary and inborn. 
It must also be confessed that the young man 
himself was endowed with a considerable share 
of that nobility which Nature capriciously dis- 
tributes among her favorites, with little respect 
for their pedigree and blazon^ — the nobility of 
form and face. He was tall and well shaped, 
with graceful length of limb and fall of shoul- 
ders ; his face was handsome, of the purest type 
of French masculine beauty — the nose inclined to 
be aquiline, and delicately thin, with finely cut 
open nostrils; the complexion clear, the eyes 
large, of a light hazel, with dark lashes, the hair 
of a chestnut brown, with no tint of auburn, the 
beard and mustache a shade darker, clipped short, 
not disguising the outline of lips, which were now 
compressed, as if smiles had of late been unfamil- 
iar to them ; yet such compression did not seem 
in harmony with the physiognomical character of 
their formation, which was that assigned by La- 
vater to temperaments easily moved to gayety and 
pleasure. 

Another man, about his own age, coming quick- 


FIRST. 

ly out of one of the streets of the Chaussee d’An- 
tin, brushed close by the stately pedestrian above 
described, caught sight of his countenance, stopped 
short, and exclaimed, ‘ ‘ Alain ! ” The person thus 
abruptly accosted turned his eye tranquilly on the 
eager face, of which all the lower part was envel- 
oped in black beard ; and slightly lifting his hat, 
with a gesture of the head that implied, “Sir, 
you are mistaken : I have not the honor to know 
you,” continued his slow, indifferent way. The 
would-be acquaintance was not so easily rebuffed. 
“Pes^e,” said he, between his teeth, “lam cer- 
tainly right. He is not much altered — of course 
I am ; ten years of Paris would improve an orang- 
outang.” Quickening his step, and regaining the 
side of the man he had called “Alain,” he said, 
with a well-bred mixture of boldness and courtesy 
in his tone and countenance, 

“Ten thousand pardons if I am wrong. But 
surely I accost Alain de Kerouec, son of the Mar- 
quis de Rochebriant ?” 

“True, Sir; but—” 

“But you do not remember me, your old college 
friend, Frederic Lemercier ?” 

“Is it possible?” cried Alain, cordially, and 
with an animation which changed the whole char- 
acter of his countenance. “ My dear Frederic, 
my dear friend, this is indeed good fortune ! So 
you, too, are at Paris ?” 

“Of course; and you? Just come, I perceive,” 
he added, somewhat satirically, as, linking his arm 
in his new-found friend’s, he glanced at the cut of 
that friend’s coat collar. 

“ I have been here a fortnight,” replied Alain. 

“ Hem ! I suppose you lodge in the old Hotel 
de Rochebriant. I passed it yesterday, admiring 
its vast fagade^ little thinking you were its in- 
mate. ” 

“ Neither am I ; the hotel does not belong to 
me — it was sold some years ago by my father.” 

“ Indeed ! I hope your father got a good price 
for it ; those grand hotels have trebled their value 
within the last five years. And how is your fa- 
ther ? Still the same polished grand seigneur ? 
I never saw him but once, you know ; and I shall 
never forget his smile, style grand monarque, when 
he patted me on the head and tipped me ten na- 
poleons.” 

“ My father is no more,” said Alain, gravely ; 
“he has been dead nearly three years.” 

'■'■del! forgive me; I am greatly shocked. 
Hem! so you are now the Marquis de Roche- 
briant — a great historical name, worth a large 
sum in the market. Few such names left. Su- 
perb place your old chateau, is it not?” 

“A superb place. No — a venerable ruin. Yes !” 

“Ah, a ruin! so much the better. All the 



12 


THE PARISIANS. 


bankers are mad after ruins — so charming an 
amusement to restore them. You will restore 
yours, without doubt. I will introduce you to 
such an architect ! has the moyen age at liis fin- 
gers’ ends. Dear — but a genius. ” 

The young Marquis smiled — for since he had 
found a college fiiend, his face showed that it 
could smile — smiled, but not cheerfully, and an- 
swered, 

“I have no intention to restore Rochebriant. 
The walls are solid ; they have weathered the 
storms of six centuries ; they will last my time, 
and with me the race perishes.” 

“Bah ! the race perish, indeed ! you will mar- 
ry. Parlez-moi de ga — you could not come to 
a better man. I have a list of all the heiresses 
at Paris, bound in Russia leather. You may take 
your choice out of twenty. Ah, if I were but a 
Rochebriant ! It is an infernal thing to come 
into the world a Lemercier. I am a democrat, 
of course. A Lemercier would be in a false po- 
sition if he were not. But if any one would leave 
me twenty acres of land, with some antique right 
to the De and a title, faith, w'ould not I be an 
aristocrat, and stand up for my order ? But now 
we have met, pray let us dine together. Ah ! no 
doubt you are engaged every day for a month. 
A Rochebriant just new to Paris must be fke by 
all the Faubourg.” 

“No,” answered Alain, simply, “ I am not en- 
gaged ; my range of acquaintance is more circum- 
scribed than you suppose.” 

“So much the better for me. I am luckily 
disengaged to-day, which is not often the case, 
for I am in some request in my own set, though 
it is not that of the Faubourg. Where shall we 
dine ? — at the Trois Freres ?” 

“ Wherever you please. I know no restaurant 
at Paris except a very ignoble one, close by my 
lodging.” 

'■‘‘Apropos, where do you lodge?” 

“Rue de TUniversite, Numero — ” 

“A fine street, but triste. If you have no 
longer your family hotel, you have no excuse to 
linger in that museum of mummies, the Faubourg 
St. Germain ; you must go into one of the new 
quarters by the Champs Elysees. Leave it to me ; 
I’ll find you a charming apartment. I know one 
to be had a bargain — a bagatelle — five hundred 
naps a year. Cost you about two or three thou- 
sand more to furnish tolerably, not showily. 
Leave all to me. In three days you shall be set- 
tled. Apropos! horses! You must have En- 
glish ones. How many ? — three for the saddle, 
two for your coupe? I’ll find them for you. I 
will write to London to-morrow. Reese" (Rice) 
“is your man.” 

“Spare yourself that trouble, my dear Fred- 
eric. I keep no horses and no coupe. I shall not 
change my apartment.” As he said this, Roche- 
briant drew himself up somewhat haughtily. 

“Faith,” thought Lemercier, “is it possible 
that the Marquis is poor ? No. I have always 
heard that the Rochebriants were among the 
greatest proprietors in Bretagne. Most likely, 
with all his innocence of the Faubourg St. Ger- 
main, he knows enough of it to be aware that I, 
Frederic Lemercier, am not the man to patron- 
ize one of its greatest nobles. Sacre bleu ! if I 
thought that ; if he meant to give himself airs to 
me, his old college friend — I would — I would 
call him out.” 


Just as M. Lemercier had come to that belli- 
cose resolution, the Marquis said, with a smile 
which, though frank, was not without a certain 
grave melancholy in its expression, “ My dear 
Frederic, pardon me if I seem to receive your 
friendly offers ungraciously. But believe that I 
have reasons you will approve for leading at 
Paris a life which you certainly will not enAy 
then, evidently desirous to change the subject, he 
said, in a livelier tone, “But what a marvelous 
city this Paris of ours is ! Remember, I had 
never seen it before : it burst on me like a city 
in the Arabian Nights two w'eeks ago. And 
that which strikes me most — I say it with regret 
and a pang of conscience — is certainly not the 
Paris of former times, but that Paris which M. 
Bonaparte — I beg pardon, Avhich the Emperor — 
has called up around him, and identified forever 
with his reign. It is what is new in Paris that 
strikes and inthralls me. Here I see the life of 
France, and I belong to her tombs!” 

“ I don’t quite understand you,” said Lemer- 
cier. “If you think that because your father 
and grandfather w’ere Legitimists, you have not 
the fair field of living ambition open to you un- 
der the empire, you never Avere more mistaken. 
Moyen age, and even rococo, are all the rage. 
You have no idea how valuable your name would 
be either at the Imperial Court or in a Commer- 
cial Company. But Avith your fortune you are 
independent of all but fashion and the Jockey 
Club. And a propos of that, pardon me — Avhat 
A’illain made your coat? — let me know; I will 
denounce him to the police.” 

Half amused, half amazed, Alain Marquis 
de Rochebriant looked at Frederic Lemercier 
much as a good-tempered lion may look upon a 
lively poodle who takes a liberty Avith his mane, 
and, after a pause, he replied, curtly, “ The 
clothes I wear at Paris Avere made in Bretagne ; 
and if the name of Rochebriant be of any value 
at all in Paris, Avhich I doubt, let me trust that 
it Avill make me acknowledged as gentilhomme, 
Avhatever my taste in a coat, or Avhatever the 
doctrines of a club composed — of jockeys.” 

“ Ha, ha!” cried Lemercier, freeing himself 
from the aim of his friend, and laughing the 
more irresistibly as he encountered the grave 
look of the Marquis. “Pardon me — I can’t 
help it — the Jockey Club — composed of jockeys ! 
— it is too much! — the best joke! My dear 
Alain, there is some of the best blood of Europe 
in the Jockey Club : they Avould exclude a plain 
bourgeois like me. But it is all the same ; in one 
respect you are quite right. Walk in a blouse if 
you please — you are still Rochebriant — you Avould 
only be called eccentric. Alas ! I am obliged to 
send to London for my pantaloons ; that comes 
of being a Lemercier. But here we are in the 
Palais Royal.” 


CHAPTER II. 

The salons of the Trois Freres w^ere crow'ded 
— our friends found a table Avith some little diffi- 
culty. Lemercier proposed a priAate cabinet, 
which, for some reason known to himself, the 
Marquis declined. 

Lemercier, spontaneously and unrequested, or- 
I dered the dinner and the Avines. 

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TUE MAEQTTIS 1>E EOCUEBEIANT, BUPLESSIS, AND LEMEECIEK AT THE TEOIS FEERES. 


f 


THE PARISIANS. 


13 


when in season, French hon-vivants usually com- 
mence their dinner, Lemercier looked round the 
salon with that air of inimitable, scrutinizing, su- 
perb impertinence which distinguishes the Pa- 
risian dandy. Some of the ladies returned his 
glance coquettishly, for Lemercier was beau gar- 
qon ; others turned aside indignantly, and mut- 
tered something to the gentlemen dining with 
them. The said gentlemen, when old, shook 
their heads, and continued to eat unmoved ; 
w’hen young, turned briskly round, and looked, 
at first fiercely, at M. Lemercier, but, encounter- 
ing his eye through the glass which he had screw- 
ed into its socket — noticing the hardihood of his 
countenance and the squareness of his shoulders 
— even they turned back to the tables, shook 
their heads, and continued to eat unmoved, just 
like the old ones. 

“Ah!” cried Lemercier, suddenly, “here 
comes a man you should know, mon cher. He 
will tell you how to place your money — a rising 
man — a coming man — a future minister. Ah ! 
bon-jour^ Duplessis, bon-jour^'^ kissing his hand 
to a gentleman who had just entered, and was 
looking about him for a seat. He was e^ddently 
well and favorably known at the Trois Freres. 
The waiters had flocked round him, and were 
pointing to a table by the window which a sat- 
urnine Englishman, who had dined off a beef- 
steak and potatoes, was about to vacate. 

Mons. Duplessis, having first assured himself, 
like a prudent man, that his table was secure, 
having ordered his oysters, his chablis, and his 
potage a la bisque^ now paced calmly and slowly 
across the salon, and halted before Lemercier. 

Here let me pause for a moment, and give the 
reader a rapid sketch of the two Parisians. 

Frederic Lemercier is dressed, somewhat too 
showily, in the extreme of the prevalent hishion. 
He wears a superb pin in his cravat — a pin worth 
2000 francs ; he wears rings on his fingers, hre- 
loques to his watch-chain. He has a wama 
though dark complexion, thick black eyebrows, 
full lips, a nose somewhat turned up, but not 
small, veiy fine large dark eyes, a bold, open, 
somewhat impertinent expression of countenance 
— withal decidedly handsome, thanks to coloring, 
youth, and vivacity of regard.” 

Lucien Duplessis, bending over the table, glan- 
cing first with curiosity at the Marquis de Roche- 
briant, who leans his cheek on his hand and seems 
not to notice him, then concentrating his atten- 
tion on Frederic Lemercier, who sits square with 
his hands clasped — Lucien Duplessis is somewhere 
between forty and fifty, rather below the middle 
height, slender but not slight — what in English 
phrase is called “ wiry.” He is dressed with ex- 
treme simplicity : black frock-coat buttoned up ; 
black cravat worn higher than men who follow 
the fashions wear their neckcloths nowadays ; a 
hawk’s eye and a hawk’s beak; hair of a dull 
brown, very short, and wholly without curl ; his 
cheeks thin and smoothly shaven, but he wears a 
mustache and imperial, plagiarized from those of 
his sovereign, and, like all plagiarisms, carrying 
the borrowed beauty to extremes, so that the 
points of mustache and imperial, stiffened and 
shai-pened by cosmetics which must have been 
composed of iron, looked like three long stings 
guarding lip and jaw from invasion ; a pale olive 
brown complexion ; eyes small, deep sunk, calm, 
piercing ; his expression of face at first glance 


not striking, except for quiet immovability. Ob- 
served more heedfully, the expression was keenly 
intellectual — determined about the lips, calcula- 
ting about the brows : altogether the face of no 
ordinary man, and one not, perhaps, without fine 
and high qualities, concealed from the general 
gaze by habitual reserve, but justifying the con- 
fidence of those whom he admitted into his in- 
timacy. 

“Ah, mon cher” said Lemercier, “you prom- 
ised to call on me yesterday at two o’clock. I 
waited in for you half an hour ; you never came.” 

“No ; I went first to the Bourse. The shares 
in that company we spoke of have fallen ; they 
will fall much lower — foolish to buy in yet ; so 
the object of my calling on you was over. I 
took it for granted you would not wait if I failed 
my appointment. Do you go to the opera to- 
night ?” 

“I think not — nothing worth going for; be- 
sides, I have found an old friend, to whom I con- 
secrate this evening. Let me introduce you to 
the Marquis de Rochebriant. Alain, M. Du- 
plessis.” 

The two gentlemen bowed. 

“I had the honor to be known to monsieur 
your father,” said Duplessis. 

“Indeed,” returned Rochebriant. “He had 
not visited Paris for many years before he died.” 

“It was in London I met him, at the house 
of the Russian Princess C .” 

The Marquis colored high, inclined his head 
gravely, and made no reply. Here the waiter 
brought the oysters and the chablis, and Duples- 
sis retired to his owm table. 

“That is the most extraordinary man,” said 
Frederic, as he squeezed the lemon over his 
oysters, “and very much to be admired.” 

“How so! I see nothing at least to admire 
in his face,” said the Marquis, with the bluntness 
of a provincial. 

“ His face. Ah ! you are a Legitimist — party 
prejudice. He dresses his face after the Emper- 
or; in itself a very clever face, surely.” 

“ Perhaps, but not an amiable one. He looks 
like a bird of prey.” 

“All clever men are birds of prey. The ea- 
gles are the heroes, and the owls the sages. Du- 
plessis is not an eagle nor an owl. I should rath- 
er call him a falcon, except that I would not at- 
tempt to hoodwink him.” 

“Call him what you will,” said the Marquis, 
indifferently; “M. Duplessis can be nothing to 
me.” 

“I’m not so sure of that,” answered Freder- 
ic, somewhat nettled by the phlegm with which 
the Provincial regarded the pretensions of the 
Parisian. “Duplessis, I repeat it, is an extraor- 
dinary man. Though untitled, he descends fi-om 
your old aristocracy ; in fact, I believe, as his 
name shows, from the same stem as the Riche- 
lieus. His father was a great scholar, and I 
believe he has read much himself. Might have 
taken to literature or the bar, but his parents 
died fearfully poor; and some distant relations 
in commerce took charge of him, and devoted 
his talents to the Bourse. Seven years ago he 
lived in a single chamber, au quatrihne, near the 
Luxembourg. He has now a hotel, not large 
but charming, in the Champs Elysees, worth at 
least 600,000 francs. Nor has he made his own 
fortune alone, but that of many others ; some of 


14 


THE PARISIANS. 


birth as high as your own. He has the genius 
of riches, and knocks otf a million as a poet does 
an ode, by the force of inspiration. He is hand- 
in-glove with the ministers, and has been invited 
to Compiegne by the Emperor. You will find 
him very useful.” 

Alain made a slight movement of incredulous 
dissent, and changed the conversation to remi- 
niscences of old school-boy days. 

The dinner at length came to a close. Fred- 
eric rang for the bill — glanced over it. “Fifty- 
nine francs,” said he, carelessly flinging down 
his napoleon and a half. The Marquis silently 
drew forth his purse and extracted the same 
sum. 

When they were out of the restaurant^ Fred- 
eric proposed adjourning to his own rooms. “ I 
can promise you an excellent cigar, one of a box 
given to me by an invaluable young Spaniard at- 
tached to the Embass)^ here. Such cigars are 
not to be had at Paris for money, nor even for 
love, seeing that women, however devoted and 
generous, never offer you any thing better than 
a cigarette. Such cigars are only to be had for 
friendship. Friendship is a jewel. ”* 

“I never smoke,” answered the Marquis, “but 
I shall be charmed to come to your rooms ; only 
don’t let me encroach on your good nature. 
Doubtless you have engagements for the even- 
mg. 

“None till eleven o’clock, when I have prom- 
ised to go to a soiree to which I do not offer to 
take you ; for it is one of those Bohemian enter- 
tainments at which it would do you harm in the 
Faubourg to assist — at least until you have made 
good your position. Let me see, is not the Du- 
chesse de Tarascon a relation of yours ?” 

“ Yes ; my poor mother’s first cousin.” 

“I congratulate you. Tr'es grande dame. She 
will launch you in puro coeloy as Juno might have 
launched one of her young peacocks. ” 

“There has been no acquaintance between our 
houses,” returned the Marquis, diyly, “ since the 
mesalliance of her second nuptials.” 

‘ ‘ Mesalliance 1 second nuptials ! Her second 
husband was the Duke de Tarascon.” 

“A duke of the First Empire — the grandson 
of a butcher.” 

‘‘^Diahle! you are a severe genealogist. Mon- 
sieur le Marquis. How can you consent to walk 
arm in arm with me, whose great-grandfather 
supplied bread to the same army to which the 
Duke de Tarascon’s grandfather furnished the 
meat ?” 

“ My dear Frederic, we two have an equal 
pedigree, for our friendship dates from the same 
hour. I do not blame the Duchesse de Taras- 
con for marrying the grandson of a butcher, but 
for marrying the son of a man made duke by a 
usurper. She abandoned the faith of her house 
and the cause of her sovereign. Therefore her 
marriage is a blot on our scutcheon.” 

Frederic raised his eyebrows, but had the tact 
to pursue the subject no further. He who inter- 
feres in the quarrels of relations must pass through 
life without a friend. 

The young men now arrived at Lemercier’s 
apartment, an entresol looking on the Boulevard 
des Italiens, consisting of more rooms than a 
bachelor generally requires, and though low- 
pitched, of good dimensions, decorated and fur- 
nished with a luxury which really astonished the 


provincial, though, with the high-bred pride of an 
Oriental, he suppressed every sign of suiprise. 

Florentine cabinets freshly retouched by the ex- 
quisite skill of Mombro, costly specimens of old 
Sevres and Limoges, pictures and bronzes and 
marble statuettes — all well chosen and of great 
price, i-eflected from mirrors in Venetian frames 
— made a coup d'oeil very fiivorable to that re- 
spect which the human mind pays to the evidences 
of money. Nor was comfort less studied than 
splendor. Thick carpets covered the floors, dou- 
bled and quilted portieres excluded all draughts 
from chinks in the doors. Having allowed his 
friend a few minutes to contemplate and admire 
the salle a manger and salon which constituted 
his more state apartments, Frederic then con- 
ducted him into a small cabinet, fitted up with 
scarlet cloth and gold fringes, whereon were ar- 
tistically arranged trophies of Eastern weapons, 
and Turkish pipes with amber mouth-pieces. 

There placing the Marquis at ease on a divan, 
and flinging himself on another, the Parisian ex- 
quisite ordered a valet, well dressed as himself, 
to bring coffee and liqueurs; and after vainly 
pressing one of his matchless cigars on his friend, 
indulged in his own regalia. 

“They are ten years old,” said Frederic, with 
a tone of compassion at Alain’s self-inflicted loss 
— “ten years old. Born, therefore, about the 
year in which we two parted. ” 

“When you were so hastily summoned from 
college,” said the Marquis, “ by the news of your 
father’s illness. We expected you back in vain. 
Have you been at Paris ever since ?” 

“Ever since; my poor father died of that ill- 
ness. His fortune proved much larger than was 
suspected — my share amounted to an income from 
investments in stocks, houses, etc., to upward of 
60,000 francs a year ; and as I wanted six years 
to my majority, of course the capital on attaining 
my majority would be increased by accumuhition. 
My mother desired to keep me near her; my 
uncle, who was joint guardian with hei‘, looked 
with disdain on our poor little provincial cottage ; 
so promising an heir should acquire his finishing 
education under mastei's at Paris. Long before 
I was of age I was initiated into politer myste- 
ries of our capital than those celebrated by Eugene 
Sue. When I took possession of my fortune -five 
years ago, I was considered a Croesus; and real- 
ly for that patriarchal time I was wealthy. Now, 
alas! my accumulations have vanished in my 
outfit; and 60,000 francs a year is the least a 
Parisian can live upon. It is not only that all 
prices have fabulously increased, but that the dear- 
er things become, the better people live. When 
I first came out, the world speculated upon me ; 
now, in order to keep my standing, I am forced 
to speculate on the world. Hitherto I have not 
lost; Duplessis let me into -a few good things 
this year, worth 100,000 francs or so. Croesus 
consulted the Delphic Oracle. Duplessis was not 
alive in the time of Croesus, or Croesus would have 
consulted Duplessis.” 

Here there was a ring at the outer door of 
the apartment, and in another minute the valet 
ushered in a gentleman somewhere about the age 
of thirty, of prepossessing countenance, and with 
the indefinable air of good-breeding and usage du 
monde. Frederic started up to greet cordially 
the new-comer, and introduced him to the Mar- 
quis under the name of “Sare Grarm-Varn.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Decidedly,” said the visitor, as he took off his 
paletot and seated himself beside the Marquis — 
“ decidedly, my dear Lemercier,” said he, in very 
correct French, and with the true Parisian accent 
and intonation. “You Frenchmen merit that 
praise for polished ignorance of the language of 
barbarians which a distinguished historian bestows 
on the ancient Romans. Permit me, Marquis, 
to submit to you the consideration whether Grarm 
\'arn is a fair rendering of my name as truthful- 
ly printed on this card.” 

Tlie inscription on the card, thus drawn from 
its case and placed in Alain’s hand, was — 

Mr. Graham Vane. 

No. — Rtie D'A njoit. 

The Marquis gazed at it as he miglit on a hiero- 
glyphic, and passed it on to Lemercier in discreet 
silence. 

That gentleman made another attempt at the 
barbarian appellation. 

‘ ‘ ‘ Grar — ham Varne. ’ C’est 9a ! I triumph ! 
all dithculties yield to French energy.” 

Here the coffee and liqueurs were served ; and 
after a short pause the Englishman, who had very 
quietly been observing the silent Marquis, turned 
to him and said: ‘‘^Monsieur le Marquis.^ I pre- 
sume it was your father whom I remember as an 
acquaintance of my own father at Ems. It is 
many years ago : I was but a child. The Count 
de Chamboni was then at that enervating little 
spa for the benefit of the Countess’s health. If 
our friend Lemercier does not mangle your name 
as he does mine, I understand him to say that 
you are the Marquis de Rochebriant.” 

“ That is my name ; it pleases me to hear that 
my father was among those who flocked to Ems 
to do homage to the royal personage who deigns 
to assume the title of Count de Chambord.” 

“My own ancestors clung to the descendants 
of James II. till their claims were buried in the 
grave of the last Stuai-t ; and I honor the gallant 
men who, like your father, revere in an exile the 
heir to their ancient kings.” 

The Englishman said this with grace and feel- 
ing ; the Marquis’s heart warmed to him at once. 

“The first loyal gentilhovnne I have met at 
Paris,” thought the Legitimist; “and oh, shame! 
not a Frenchman !” 

Graham Vane, now stretching himself and ac- 
cepting the cigar which Lemercier offered him, 
said to that gentleman: “You who know your 
Paris by heart — every body and every thing there- 
in worth the knowing, with many bodies and many 
things that are not worth it — can you inform me 
who and what is a certain lady who every fine 
day may be seen walking in a quiet spot at the 
outskirts of the Bois de Boulogne, not far from 
the Baron de Rothschild’s villa ? The said lady 
arrives at this selected spot, in a dark blue coujte 
without armorial bearings, punctually at the hour 
of three. She wears always the same dress, a 
kind of gray pearl-colored silk, with a cachemire 
shawd. In age she may be somewhat about twen- 
ty — a year or so more or less — and has a face as 
haunting as a Medusa’s ; not, however, a face to 
turn a man into a stone, but rather of the two 
tuni a stone into a man. A clear paleness, with 
a bloom like an alabaster lamp with the light j 
flashing through. I borrow that illustration from j 
Sare Scott, who applied it to Milor Bee-ron.” j 

“I have not seen the lady you describe,” an- 
B 


1 5 

swered Lemercier, feeling humiliated by the avow- 
al; “in fact, I have not been in that sequestered 
part of the Bois for months ; but I will go to- 
morrow : three o’clock, you say — leave it to me ; 
to-morrpw evening, if she is a Parisienne, you 
shall know all about her. But, rnon cher, you 
are not of a jealous temperament to confide your 
discovery to another.” 

“Yes, I am of a very jealous temperament,” 
replied the Englishman ; “ but jealousy comes 
after love, and not before it. I am not in love ; 
I am only haunted. To-morrow evening, then, 
shall we dine at Philippe’s, seven o’clock ?” 

“ With all my heart,” said Lemercier ; “ and 
you too, Alain.” 

“Thank you, no,” said the Marquis, briefly ; 
and he rose, drew on his gloves, and took up his 
hat. 

At these signals of departure, the Englishman, 
who did not want tact nor delicacy, thought 
that he had made himself de trop in the tete-a- 
tete of two friends of the same age and nation ; 
and catching up his paletot, said, hastily, “No, 
Marquis, do not go yet, and leave our host in 
solitude ; for I have an engagement which press- 
es, and only looked in at Lemercier’s for a mo- 
ment, seeing the light at his windows. Permit 
me to hope that our acquaintance will not drop, 
and inform me where I may have the honor to 
call on you.” 

“Nay,” said the Marquis ; “ I claim the right 
of a native to pay my respects first to the foreign- 
er who visits our capital, and,” he added in a 
lower tone, “who speaks so nobly of those who 
revere its exiles.” 

The Englishman saluted, and walked slowlv 
toward the door ; but on reaching the threshold, 
turned back and made a sign to Lemercier, 
un perceived by Alain. 

Frederic understood the sign, and followed 
Graham Vane into the adjoining room, closing 
the door as he passed. 

“ My dear Lemercier, of course I should not 
have intruded on you at this hour on a mere visit 
of ceremony. I called to say that the Mademoi- 
selle Duval whose address you sent me is not the 
right one — not the lady whom, knowing your 
wide range of acquaintance, I asked you to aid 
me in finding out.” 

“ Not the right Duval ? Diable! she answered 
your description exactly.” 

“ Not at all.” 

“You said she was veiy pretty and young — 
under twenty.” 

“ You forgot that I said she deserved that de- 
scription twenty-one years ago.” 

“Ah, so you did ; but some ladies are always 
young. ‘Age,’ says a wit in the Figaro, ‘is a 
river which the women compel to reascend to 
its source when it has flowed onward more than 
twenty years.’ Never mind — soyez tranquille — 
I will find your Duval yet if she is to be found. 
But why could not the friend who commissioned 
you to inquire choose a name less common ? Du- 
val ! every street in Paris has a shop door over 
which is inscribed the name of Duval.” 

“Quite true, there is the difficulty ; however, 
my dear Lemercier, pray continue to look out 
j for a Louise Duval who was young and pretty 
i twenty-one years ago — this search ought to in- 
j terest me more than that which I intrusted to 
you to-night respecting the pearly-robed lady : 


THE PARISTANS. 


16 

for in the last I but gratify my own whim ; in 
the first I discharge a promise to a friend. You, 
so perfect a Frenchman, know the difierence ; 
honor is engaged to the first. Be sure you let 
me know if you find any other Madame or Made- 
moiselle Duval ; and of course you remember 
your promise not to mention to any one the com- 
mission of inquiry you so kindly undertake. I 
congratulate you on your friendship for M. de 
Kochebriant. What a noble countenance and 
manner ! ” 

Lemercier returned to the Marquis. “ Such a 
pity you can’t dine with us to-morrow. I fear 
you made but a poor dinner to-day. But it is 
always better to arrange the menu beforehand. 
I will send to Philippe’s to-morrow. Do not be 
afraid. ” 

The Marquis paused a moment, and on his 
young face a proud struggle was visible. At last 
he said, bluntly and manfully, 

“ My dear Frederic, your world and mine are 
not and can not be the same. Why should I be 
ashamed to own to my old school-fellow that 1 am 
poor — very poor ; that the dinner I have shared 
with you to-day is to me a criminal extrava- 
gance ? I lodge in a single chamber on the fourth 
story ; I dine off" a single plat at a small restau- 
rateur's ; the utmost income I can allow to my- 
self does not exceed five thousand francs a year : 
my fortunes I can not hope much to improve. 
In his own country Alain de Kochebriant has no 
career.” 

Lemercier was so astonished by this confession 
that he remained for some moments silent, eyes 
and mouth both wide open ; at length he sprang 
up, embraced his friend, well-nigh sobbing, and 
exclaimed, “ Tan# mieux pour moi ! You must 
take your lodging with me. I haA^e a charming 
bedroom to spare. Don’t say no. It ivill raise 
my own position to say I and Kochebriant keep 
house together. It must be so. Come here to- 
morrow. As for not haAung a career — bah ! I 
and Duplessis will settle that. You shall be a 
millionnaire in two years. Meanwhile we will 
join capitals : I my paltry notes, you your grand 
name. Settled!” 

“My dear, dear Frederic,” said the young 
noble, deeply affected, “ on reflection you will see 
Avhat you propose is impossible. Poor I may be 
without dishonor ; live at another man’s cost I 
can not do without baseness. It does not re- 
quire to be gentilhomme to feel that : it is enough 
to be a Frenchman. Come and see me when 
you can spare the time. There is my address. 
You are the only man in Paris to whom I shall 
be at home. Au revoir." And breaking away 
from Lemercier’s clasp, the Marquis hurried off. 


CHAPTEKIII. 

Alain reached the house in which he lodged. 
Externally a fine house, it had been the hotel of 
a great family in the old regime. On the first 
floor were still superb apartments, with ceilings 
painted by Le Brun, with walls on which the 
thick silks still seemed fresh. These rooms were 
occupied by a rich agent de change ; but, like 
all such ancient palaces, the upper stories were 
wretchedly defective, even in the comforts which 
poor men demand nowadays : a back staircase, 


narrow, dirty, never lighted, dark as Erebus, led 
to the room occupied by the Marquis, which 
might be naturally occupied by a needy student 
or a virtuous grisette. But there was to him a 
charm in that old hotel, and the richest locataire 
therein w'as not treated with a respect so cere- 
monious as that which attended the lodger on the 
fourth story. The porter and his wife w^ere Bre- 
tons ; they came from the village of Kochebriant ; 
they had known Alain’s parents in their young 
days ; it was their kinsman who had recommend- 
ed him to the hotel which they served : so, when 
he paused at the lodge for his key, which he had 
left there, the porter’s wife w^as in waiting for his 
return, and insisted on lighting him up stairs and 
seeing to his fire, for after a warm day the night 
had turned to that sharp biting cold which is 
more trying in Paris than even in London. 

The old woman, running up the stairs before 
him, opened the door of his room, and busied 
herself at the fire. “Gently, my good Martha,” 
said he ; “ that log suffices. I have been extrav- 
agant to-dav, and must pinch for it.” 

“Ji. le Marquis jests,” said the old woman, 
laughing. 

“No, Martha; I am serious. I haA'e sinned, 
but I shall reform. Entre nous, my dear friend, 
Paris is veiy dear w'hen one sets one’s foot out- 
of-doors : I must soon go back to Kochebriant.” 

“When M. le Marquis goes back to Koche- 
briant he must take with him a Madame la Mar- 
quise — some pretty angel with a suitable dot." 

“A dot suitable to the ruins of Kochebriant 
would not suffice to repair them, Martha : give 
me my dressing-gown, and good-night.” 

Bon repos, M. le Marquis! heaux reves, et 
bel avenir." 

Bel avenir!" murmured the young man, bit- 
terly, leaning his cheek on his hand ; “w'hat for- 
tune fairer than the present can be mine? yet in- 
action in youth is more keenly felt than in age. 
How lightly I should endure poverty if it brought 
poverty’s ennobling companion. Labor — denied 
to me I Well, well ; I must go back to the old 
rock : on this ocean there is no sail, not even an 
oai', for me.” 

Alain de Kochebriant had not been reared to 
the expectation of poverty. The only son of a 
father whose estates were large beyond those of 
most nobles in modern France, his destined her- 
itage seemed not unsuitable to his illustrious 
birth. Educated at a provincial academy, he 
had been removed at the age of sixteen to Koche- 
briant, and lived there simply and lonelily enough, 
but still in a sort of feudal state, with an aunt, an 
elder and unmarried sister to his father. 

His father he never saw but twice after leaving 
college. That brilliant seigneur visited France 
but rarely, for very brief intervals, residing wholly 
abroad. To him went all the revenues of Koche- 
briant save what sufficed for the manage of his 
son and his sister. It was the cherished belief 
of these two lo^al natures that the Marquis se- 
cretly devoted his fortune to the cause of the 
Bourbons — how, they knew not, though they oft- 
en amused themselves by conjecturing ; and the 
young man, as he grew up, nursed the hope that 
he should soon hear that the descendant of Henri 
Quatre had crossed the frontier on a white charger 
and hoisted the old gonfalon with its Jieur-de-lis. 
Then, indeed, his own career would be opened, 
and the sword of the Kerouecs drawn from its 


THE PARISIANS. 


17 


sheath. Day after day he expected to hear of 
revolts, of which his noble father was doubtless 
the soul. But the Marquis, though a sincere Le- 
gitimist, was by no means an enthusiastic fanat- 
ic. He was simply a very proud, a very polish- 
ed, a very luxurious, and, though not without 
the kindliness and generosity which were com- 
mon attributes of the old French noblesse^ a very 
selfish grand seigneur. 

Losing his wife (who died the first year of mar- 
riage in giving birth to Alain) while he was yet 
very young, he had lived a frank libertine life un- 
til he fell submissive under the despotic yoke of a 
Russian princess, who, for some mysterious rea- 
son, never visited her own country, and obstinate- 
ly refused to reside in France. She was fond of 
travel, and moved yearly from London to Naples, 
Naples to Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Seville, Carls- 
bad, Baden-Baden — any where for caprice or 
change, except Paris. This fair wanderer suc- 
ceeded in chaining to herself the heart and the 
steps of the Marquis de Rochebriant. 

She w’as veiy rich ; she lived semi-royally. 
Hers was just the house in which it suited the 
Marquis to be the enfant gate. I suspect that, 
cat-like, his attachment was rather to the house 
than to the person of his mistress. Not that he 
was domiciled with the princess ; that would have 
been somewhat too much against the proprieties, 
greatly too much against the 'Marquis’s notions 
of his own dignity. He had his own carriage, 
his own apartments, his own suite, as became so 
grand a seigneur, and the lover of so grand a 
dome. His estates, mortgaged before he came to 
them, yielded no income sufficient for his wants ; 
he mortgaged deeper and deeper, year after year, 
till he could mortgage them no more. He sold 
his hotel at Paris — he accepted without scruple 
his sister’s fortune — he borrowed with equal sang- 
froid the two hundred thousand francs which his 
son on coming of age inherited from his mother. 
Alain yielded that fortune to him without a mur- 
mur — nay, with pride ; he thought it destined to 
go toward raising a regiment for the fleur-de-lis. 

To do the Marquis justice, he was fully per- 
suaded that he should shortly restore to his sister 
and son what he so recklessly took from them. 
He was engaged to be married to his princess so 
soon as her own husband died. She had been 
separated from the prince for many years, and 
every year it was said he could not last a year 
longer. But he completed the measure of his 
conjugal iniquities by continuing to live ; and one 
day, by mistake. Death robbed the lady of the 
Mai'quis instead of the prince. 

This was an accident which the Marquis had 
never counted upon. He was still young enough 
to consider himself young ; in fact, one principal 
reason for keeping Alain secluded in Brittany 
was his reluctance to introduce into the -world a 
son “as old as myself,” he would say, pathetically. 
The news of his death, which happened nt Baden 
after a short attack of bronchitis caught in a sup- 
per al fresco at the old castle, was duly transmit- 
ted to Rochebriant by the princess ; and the shock 
to Alain and his aunt was the greater because 
they had seen so little of the departed that they 
regarded him as a heroic myth, an impersonation 
of ancient chivalry, condemning himself to vol- 
untary exile rather than do homage to usurpers. 
But from their grief they were soon roused by 
the terrible doubt whether Rochebriant could 


still be retained in the family. Besides the mort- 
gagees, creditors from half the capitals in Europe 
sent in their claims ; and all the movable eftects 
transmitted to Alain by his father’s confidential 
Italian valet, except sundry carriages and horses 
which were sold at Baden for what they would 
fetch, w'ere a magnificent dressing-case, in the 
secret drawer of which were some bank-notes 
amounting to thirty thousand francs, and three 
large boxes containing the Marquis’s correspond- 
ence, a few miniature female portraits, and a 
great many locks of hair. 

Wholly unprepared for the ruin that stared 
him in the face, the young Marquis evinced the 
natural strength of his character by the calmness 
with which he met the danger, and the intelli- 
gence with which he calculated and reduced it. 

By the help of the family notary in the neigh- 
boring town, he made himself master of his lia- 
bilities and his means ; and he found that, after 
paying all debts and providing for the interest of 
the mortgages, a property which ought to have 
realized a rental of £10,000 a year yielded not 
more than £400. Nor was even this margin 
safe, nor the property out of peril ; for the prin- 
cipal mortgagee, who was a capitalist in Paris, 
named Louvier, having had during the life of the 
late Marquis more than once to wait for his half- 
yearly interest longer than suited his patience — 
and his patience was not enduring — plainly de- 
clared that if the same delay recurred he should 
put his right of seizure in force ; and in France, 
still more than in England, bad seasons seriously 
affect the security of rents. To pay away £9G00 
a year regularly out of £10,000, with the penalty 
of forfeiting the whole if not paid, whether crops 
may fail, farmers procrastinate, and timber fall 
in price, is to live with the sword of Damocles 
over one’s head. 

For two years and more, however, Alain met 
his difficulties with prudence and vigor ; he re- 
trenched the establishment hitherto kept at the 
chateau, resigned such rural pleasures as he had 
been accustomed to indulge, and lived like one 
of his petty farmers. But the risks of the future 
remained undiminished. 

“ There is but one Avay, Monsieur le Marquis fl 
said the family notary, M. Hebert, “by which 
you can put your estate in comparative safety. 
Your father raised his mortgages from time to 
time, as he wanted money, and often at interest 
above the average market interest. You may add 
considerably to your income by consolidating all 
these mortgages into one at a lower percentage, 
and in so doing pay off this formidable mortga- 
gee, M. Louvier, who, I shrewdly suspect, is bent 
upon becoming the proprietor of Rochebriant. 
Unfortunately those few portions of your land 
which were but lightly charged, and, Ipng con- 
tiguous to small proprietors, were coveted by 
them, and could be advantageously sold, are al- 
ready gone to pay the debts of moqsieur the late 
Marquis. There are, however, two small farms 

which, bordering close on the town of S , I 

think I could dispose of for building purposes at 
high rates ; but these lands are covered by Mon- 
sieur Lourier’s general mortgage, and he has re- 
fused to release them unless the whole debt be 
paid. Were that debt, therefore, transferred to 
another mortgagee, we might stipulate for their 
exception, and in so doing secure a sum of more 
than lOOjOOO francs, which you could keep in re- 


18 


THE PARISIANS. 


serve for a pressing or unforeseen occasion, and 
make the nucleus of a capital devoted to the 
gradual liquidation of the cliarges on the estate. 
For with a little capital, Monsieur le Marquis, 
your rent-roll might be very greatly increased, the 
forests and orchards improved, those meadows 

round S drained and irrigated. Agriculture 

is beginning to be understood in Bretagne, and 
your estate would soon double its value in the 
hands of a spirited capitalist. My advice to you, 
therefore, is to go to Paris, employ a good avoue, 
practiced in such branch of his profession, to ne- 
gotiate the consolidation of your mortgages upon 
terms that will enable you to sell* outlying por- 
tions, and so pay oft’ the charge by installments 
agreed upon ; to see if some safe company or 
rich individual can be found to undertake for a 
term of years the management of your forests, 
the draining of the S meadows, the superin- 

tendence of your fisheries, etc. They, it is true, 
w'ill monopolize the profits for many years — per- 
haps twenty ; but you are a young man ; at the 
end of that time you will re-enter on your estate 
with a rental so improved that the mortgages, now 
so awful, will seem to you comparatively trivial.” 

In pursuance of this advice, the young Marquis 
had come to Paris fortified with a letter from M. 
Hebert to an avoueoi eminence, and with many let- 
ters from his aunt to the nobles of the Faubourg 
connected with his house. Now one reason why 
M. Hebert had urged his client to undertake this 
important business in person, rather than volun- 
teer his own services in Paris, w'as somewhat ex- 
tra-professional. He had a sincere and profound 
aft’ection for Alain ; he felt compassion for that 
young life so barrenly wasted in seclusion and 
severe privations ; he respected, but was too prac- 
tical a man of business to share, those chivalrous 
sentiments of loyalty to an exiled dynasty which 
disqualified the man for the age he lived in, and, 
if not greatly modified, would cut him oft’ from 
the hopes and aspirations of his eager generation. 
He thought plausibly enough that the air of the 
grand metropolis was necessary to the mental 
liealth, enfeebled and withering amidst the feud- 
al mists of Bretagne ; that once in Paris, Alain 
w'ould imbibe the ideas of Paris, adapt himself 
to some career leading to honor and to fortune, 
for which he took facilities from his high birth, 
a historical name too national for any dynasty 
not to w'elcome among its adherents, and an in- 
tellect not yet sharpened by contact and com- 
petition witli others, but in itself vigorous, habit- 
uated to thought, and vivified by the noble aspi- 
rations which belong to imaginative natures. 

At the least, Alain w'ould be at Pans in the social 
position which would aft'ord him the opportunities 
of a marriage in w'hich his birth and rank w'ould 
be readily accepted as an equivalent to some am- 
ple fortune that would serve to redeem the en- 
dangered seigneuries. He therefore warned Alain 
that the affair for which he went to Paris might 
be tedious, that lawyers were always slow, and 
advised him to calculate on remaining several 
months, perhaps a year ; delicately suggesting 
that his rearing hitherto had been too secluded 
for his age and rank, and that a year at Pans, 
even if he failed in the object w’hich took him 
there, would not be thrown aw'ay in the knowd- 
edge of men and things that would fit him better 
to grapple with his difficulties on his return. 

Alain divided his spare income between his 


aunt and himself, and had come to Paris reso- 
lutely determined to live within the <£200 a year 
which remained to his share. He felt the revo- 
lution in his w'hole being which commenced when 
out of sight of the petty principality in which he 
was the object of that feudal reverence, still sur- 
viving in the more unfrequented parts of Bre- 
tagne, for the representatives of illustrious names 
connected with tlie immemorial legends of the 
province. 

The very bustle of a railway, w'ith its crowd 
and quickness and unceremonious democracy of 
travel, served to pain and confound and humili- 
ate that sense of individual dignity in which he 
had been nurtured. He felt that, once away 
from Rochebriant, he was but a cipher in the 
sum of human beings. Arrived at Paris, and 
reaching the gloomy hotel to which he had been 
I’ecommended, he greeted even the desolation of 
that solitude which is usually so oppressive to a 
stranger in the metropolis of his native land. 
Loneliness w'as better than the loss of self in the 
reek and pressure of an unfamiliar throng. For 
the first few days he had wandered over Paris 
without calling even on the avou^ to whom M. 
Hebert had directed him. He felt with the in- 
stinctive acuteness of a mind which, under sound- 
er training, would have achieved no mean dis- 
tinction, that it was a safe precaution to imbue 
himself with the atmosphere of the place, seize 
on those general ideas which in great capitals are 
so contagious that they are often more accurate- 
ly caught by the first impressions than by subse- 
quent habit, before he brought his mind into con- 
tact with those of the individuals he had practi- 
cally to deal with. 

At last he repaired to the avoue, M. Gandrin, 
Rue St. Florentin. He had mechanically form- 
ed his idea of the abode and person of an avoue 
from his association with M. Hebert. He ex- 
pected to find a dull house in a dull street near 
the centre of business, remote from the haunts of 
idlers, and a grave man of unpretending exterior 
and matured years. 

He arrived at a hotel newly fronted, richly dec- 
orated, in the fashionable quartier close by the 
Tuileries. He entered a w'ide ^orfe cochere, and 
was directed by the concierge to mount au pre- 
mier. There, first detained in an office faultless- 
ly neat, with spruce young men at smart desks, 
he was at length admitted into a noble salon, and 
into the presence of a gentleman lounging in an 
easy-chair befoi'e a magnificent bureau of mar- 
queterie, genre Louis Seize, engaged in patting a 
white curly lap-dog with a pointed nose and a 
shrill bark. 

The gentleman rose politely on his entrance, 
and released the dog, who, after sniffing the Mar- 
quis, condescended not to bite. 

‘‘‘‘Monsieur le Marquis," said M. Gandrin, 
glancing at the card and the introductory note 
from M. Hebert, which Alain had sent in, and 
which lay on the secretaire beside heaps of let- 
ters nicely arranged and labeled, “charmed to 
make the honor of your acquaintance ; just ar- 
rived at Paris? So M. Hebert — a very worthy 
person whom I have never seen, but with whom 
I have had correspondence — tells me you wish 
for my advice ; in fact, he wrote to me some days 
ago, mentioning the business in question — consol- 
idation of mortgages. A very large sum wanted. 
Monsieur le Marquis, and not to be had easily.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


39 


“ Nevertheless,” said Alain, quietly, “ I should 
imagine that there must be many capitalists in 
Paris willing to invest in good securities at fair 
interest.” 

“You are mistaken. Marquis; very few such 
capitalists. Men worth money nowadays like 
quick returns and large profits, thanks to the 
magnificent system of Credit Mobilier, in which, 
as you are aware, a man may place his money 
in any trade or speculation without liabilities be- 
yond his share. Capitalists are nearly all traders 
or speculators.” 

“Then,” said the Marquis, half rising, “I am 
to presume. Sir, that you are not likely to assist 
me.” 

“No, I don’t say that. Marquis. I will look 
with care into the matter. Doubtless you have 
with you an abstract of the necessary documents, 
the conditions of the present mortgages, the rental 
of the estate, its probable prospects, and so forth.” 

“Sir, I have such an abstract with me at 
Paris ; and having gone into it myself with M. 
Hebert, I can pledge you my word that it is 
strictly faithful to the facts.” 

The Marquis said this with naive simplicity, 
as if his word were quite sufficient to set that 
part of the question at rest. 

M. Gandrin smiled politely and said, “AlA 
bien, M. le Marquis : favor me with the abstract ; 
in a week’s time you shall have my opinion. 
You enjoy Paris ? Greatly improved under the 
Emperor ; the salons, indeed, are hardly open yet. 
Apropos, Madame Gandrin receives to-morrow 
evening; allow me that opportunity to present 
you to her.” 

Unprepared for the proffered hospitality, the 
Marquis had no option but to murmur his grati- 
fication and assent. 

In a minute more he was in the streets. The 
next evening he went to Madame Gandrin’s — 
a brilliant reception — a whole moving flower bed 
of “decorations” there. Having gone through 
the ceremony of presentation to Madame Gan- 
drin — a handsome woman dressed to perfection, 
and conversing with the secretary to an embassy 
— the young noble ensconced himself in an ob- 
scure and quiet corner, observing all, and imag- 
ining that he escaped observation. And as the 
young men of his own years glided by him, or as 
their talk reached his ears, he became aware that 
from top to toe, within and without, he was old- 
fashioned, obsolete, not of his race, not of his day. 
His rank itself seemed to him a Waste-paper ti- 
tle-deed to a heritage long lapsed. Not thus the 
princely seigneurs of Rochebriant made their de- 
but at the capital of their nation. They had had 
the entree to the cabinets of their kings ; they 
had glittered in the halls of Versailles ; they had 
held high posts of distinction in court and camp; 
the great Order of St. Louis had seemed their 
hereditary appanage. His father, though a vol- 
untary exile in manhood, had been in childhood 
a king’s page, and throughout life remained the 
associate of princes; and here, in an avoue's soiree, 
unknown, unregarded, an expectant on an avoue's 
patronage, stood the last lord of Rochebriant. 

It is easy to conceive that Alain did not stay 
long. But he staid long enough to convince 
him that on £200 a year the polite society of 
I*aris, even as seen at M. Gandrin’s, was not for 
him. Nevertheless, a day"^ or two after, he re- 
solved to call upon the nearest of his kinsmen to 


whom his aunt had given him letters. With the 
Count de Vandemar, one of his fellow-nobles of 
the sacred Faubourg, he should be no less Roche- 
briant, whether in a garret or a palace. The 
Vandemars, in fact, though for many generations 
before the First Revolution a puissant and brill- 
iant family, had always recognized the Roche- 
briants as the head of their house — the trunk! 
from which they had been slipped in the fifteenth 
century, when a younger son of the Rochebriants 
married a wealthy heiress and took the title, with 
the lands of Vandemar. 

Since then the two families had often inter- 
married. The present Count had a reputation 
for ability, was himself a large proprietor, and 
might furnish advice to guide him with M. Gan- 
drin. The Hotel de Vandemar stood facing the 
old Hotel de Rochebriant; it was less spacious, 
but not less venerable, gloomy, and prison-like. 

As he turned his eyes from the armorial scutch- 
eon which still rested, though chipped and mould- 
ering, over the portals of his lost ancestral house, 
and was about to cross the street, two young men, 
who seemed two or three years older than him- 
self, emerged on horseback from the Hotel de 
Vandemar. 

Handsome young men, with the lofty look of 
the old race, dressed with the punctilious care of 
person which is not foppery in men of birth, but 
seems part of the self-respect that appertains to 
the old chivalric point of honor. The horse of 
one of these cavaliers made a caracole which 
brought it nearly upon Alain as he was about to 
cross. The rider, checking his steed, lifted his 
hat to Alain and uttered a word of apology in 
the courtesy of ancient high-breeding, but still 
with condescension as to an inferior. This little 
incident, and the slighting kind of notice received 
from coevals of his own birth, and doubtless his 
own blood — for he divined truly that they were 
the sons of the Count de Vandemar — disconcert- 
ed Alain to a degree which perhaps a French- 
man alone can comprehend. He had even half 
a mind to give up his visit and turn back. How- 
ever, his native manhood prevailed over that mor- 
bid sensitiveness which, born out of the union of 
pride and poverty, has all the effects of vanity, 
and yet is not vanity itself. 

The Count was at home, a thin spare man with 
a narrow but high forehead, and an expression of 
countenance keen, severe, and un peu moqueuse. 

He received the Marquis, however, at first with 
great cordiality, kissed him on both sides of his 
cheek, called him “ cousin,” expressed immeasur- 
able regret that the Countess was gone out on one 
of the missions of charity in which the great la- 
dies of the Faubourg religiously interest them- 
selves, and that his sons had just ridden forth to 
the Bois. 

As Alain, however, proceeded, simply and with- 
out false shame, to communicate the object of his 
visit at Paris, the extent of his liabilities, and the 
penury of his means, the smile vanished from the 
Count’s fiice ; he somewhat drew back his fauteu- 
il in the movement common to men who wish to 
estrange themselves from some other man’s diffi- 
culties ; and when Alain came to a close, the 
Count remained some moments seized with a 
slight cough ; and, gazing intently on the car- 
pet, at length he said, “My dear young friend, 
your father behaved extremely ill to you — dis- 
honorably, fraudulently.” 


20 


THE PARISIANS. 


“Hold!” said the Marquis, coloring high. 
“ Those are words no man can apply to my fa- 
ther in my presence.” 

The Count stared, shrugged his shoulders, and 
replied, with sang-froid^ 

“ Marquis, if you are contented with your fa- 
ther’s conduct, of course it is no business of 
mine; he never injured me. I presume, how- 
ever, that, considering my years and my charac- 
ter, you come to me for advice — is it so ?” 

Alain bowed his head in assent. 

“ There are four courses for one in your posi- 
tion to take,” said the Count, placing the index 
of the right hand successively on the thumb and 
three fingers of the left — “ four courses, and no 
more. 

“ First. To do as your notary recommended : 
consolidate your mortgages, patch up your in- 
come as you best can, return to Rochebriant, and 
devote the rest of your existence to the preserva- 
tion of your property. By that course your life 
will be one of permanent privation, severe strug- 
gle ; and the probability is that you will not suc- 
ceed : there will come one or two bad seasons, 
the farmers will fail to pay, the mortgagee will 
foreclose, and you may find yourself, after twen- 
ty years of anxiety and torment, prematurely old 
and without a sou. 

“ Course the second. Rochebriant, though so 
heavily encumbered as to yield you some such in- 
come as your father gave to his chef de cuisine, is 
still one of those superb terres which bankers and 
Jews and stock-jobbers court and hunt after, for 
which they will give enormous sums. If you 
place it in good hands, I do not doubt that you 
could dispose of the property within three months, 
on terms that would leave you a considerable sur- 
plus, which, invested with judgment, would afford 
you whereon you could live at Paris in a way suit- 
able to your rank and age. — Need we go further ? 
Does this course smile to you ?” 

“ Pass on. Count ; I will defend to the last what 
I take from my ancestors, and can not voluntari- 
ly sell their roof-tree and their tombs.” 

“ Your name would still remain, and you w’ould 
be just as well received in Paris, and your noblesse 
just as implicitly conceded, if all Judaea encamp- 
ed upon Rochebriant. Consider how few of us 
gentilshommes of the old regime have any domains 
left to us. Our names alone survive ; no revolu- 
tion can efface them.” 

“ It may be so, but pardon me ; there are sub- 
jects on which we can not reason — we can but 
feel. Rochebriant may be tom from me, but I 
can not yield it.” 

“I proceed to the third course. Keep the 
chateau and give up its traditions; remain de 
facto Marquis of Rochebriant, but accept the 
new order of things. Make yourself known to 
the people in power. They will be charmed to 
welcome you ; a convert from the old noblesse is 
a guarantee of stability to the new system. You 
will be placed in diplomacy ; effloresce into an 
embassador, a minister — and ministers nowadays 
have opportunities to become enormously rich.” 

“That course is not less impossible than the 
last. Till Henry V. formally resign his right to 
the throne of St. Louis, I can be seiwant to no 
other man seated on that throne.” 

“Such, too, is my creed,” said the Count, “and 
I cling to it ; but my estate is not mortgaged, and 
I have neither the tastes nor the age for public 


employments. The last course is perhaps better 
than the rest ; at all events, it is the easiest. A 
wealthy marriage, even if it must be a mesalli- 
ance. I think at your age, with your appearance, 
that your name is worth at least two million francs 
in the eyes of a rich roturier with an ambitious 
daughter.” 

“ Alas !” said the young man, rising, “I see I 
shall have to go back to Rochebriant. I cannot 
sell my castle, I can not sell my creed, and I can 
not sell my name and myself. ” 

“The last all of us did in the old regime, 
Marquis. Though I still retain the title of Van- 
demar, my property comes from the Farmer- 
General’s daughter, whom my great-grandfather, 
happily for us, married in the days of Louis 
Quinze. Marriages with people of sense and 
rank have always been mariages de convenance 
in France. It is only in le petit monde that men 
having nothing marry girls having nothing, and 
I don’t believe they are a bit the happier for it. 
On the contrary, the quarrels de menage leading 
to frightful crimes appear by the Gazette des 
Tribunaux to be chiefly found among those who 
do not sell themselves at the altar.” 

The old Count said this with a gx'im persiflage. 
He was a Voltairian. 

Voltairianism deserted by the modern Liber- 
als of France has its chief cultivation nowadays 
among the wits of the old regime. They pick up 
its light weapons on the battle-field on which their 
fathers perished, and re-feather against the ca- 
naille the shafts which had been pointed against 
the noblesse. 

“Adieu, Count,” said Alain, rising ; “ I do not 
thank you less for your advice because I have not 
the wit to profit by it.” 

“ Au revoir, my cousin ; you will think better 
of it when you have been a month or two at Par- 
is. By-the-way, my wife receives every Wednes- 
day ; consider our house yours.” 

“Count, can I enter into the world which Ma- 
dame la Comtesse receives, in the way that be- 
comes my birth, on the income I take from my 
fortune ?” 

The Count hesitated. “ No,” said he at last, 
frankly ; “ not because you will be less welcome 
or less respected, but because I see that you have 
all the pride and sensitiveness of a seigneur de 
province. Society would therefore give you pain, 
not pleasure. More than this, I know by the re- 
membrance of my own youth, and the sad expe- 
rience of my own sons, that you would be irre- 
sistibly led into debt, and debt in your circum- 
stances would be the loss of Rochebriant. No ; 
I invite you to visit us. I offer you the most se- 
lect but not the most brilliant circles of Paris, 
because my wife is religious, and frightens away 
the birds of gay plumage with the scarecrow's of 
priests and bishops. But if you accept my invi- 
tation and my offer, I am bound, as an old man 
of the world to a young kinsman, to say that the 
chances are that you will be ruined.” 

“I thank you. Count, for your candor; and I 
now acknowledge that I have found a relation 
and a guide,” answered the Marquis, with a no- 
bility of mien that was not without a pathos which 
touched the hard heart of the old man. 

“ Come at least whenever you want a sincere 
if a rude friend;” and tiiough he did not kiss his 
1 cousin’s cheek this time, he gave him, with more 
I sincerity, a parting shake of the hand. 


THE PAKISIANS. 


21 


And these made the principal events in Alain’s 
Paris life till he met Frederic Lemercier. Hith- 
erto he had received no definite answer from 
M. Gandrin, who had postponed an interview, 
not having had leisure to make himself master 
of all the details in the abstract sent to him. 


CHAPTER IV. 

The next day, toward the aftemoon, Frederic 
Lemercier, somewhat breathless from the rapidi- 
ty at which he had ascended to so high an emi- 
nence, burst into Alain’s chamber. 

“Pr-r.' mon cher ; what superb exercise for 
the health — how it must strengthen the muscles 
and expand the chest; after this who should 
shrink from scaling Mont Blanc? — Well, well. 
I have been meditating on your business ever 
since we parted. But I would fain know more 
of its details. You shall confide them to me as 
we drive through the Bois. My coupe is below, 
and the day is beautiful. Come.” 

To the young Marquis, the gayety, the hearti- 
ness of his college friend were a cordial. How 
different from the dry counsels of the Count de 
Vandemar! Hope, though vaguely, entered into 
his heart. Willingly he accepted Frederic’s in- 
vitation, and the young men were soon rapidly 
borne along the Champs Elysees. As briefly as 
he could Alain described the state of his affairs, 
the nature of his mortgages, and the result of his 
interview with M. Gandrin. 

Frederic listened attentively. “Then Gan- 
drin has given you as yet no answer ?” 

“ None : but I have a note from him this morn- 
ing asking me to call to-morrow. ” 

“After you have seen him, decide on nothing 
— if he makes you any offer. Get back your ab- 
stract, or a copy of it, and confide it to me. Gan- 
drin ought to help you ; he transacts affairs in a 
large way. Belle clientele among the million- 
naires. But his clients expect fabulous profits, 
and so does he. As for your principal mort- 
gagee, Louvier, you know of course who he is.” 

“No, except that M. Hebert told me that he 
was very rich.” 

“Rich — I should think so; one of the Kings 
of Finance. Ah ! observe those young men on 
horseback.” 

Alain looked forth and recognized the two 
cavaliers whom he had conjectured to be the sons 
of the Count de Vandemar. 

“Those beaux gargons are fair specimens of 
your Faubourg,” said Frederic; “they would 
decline my acquaintance because my grandfather 
kept a shop, and they keep a shop between them ! ” 

“A shop — I am mistaken, then. Who are 
they ?” 

“Raoul and Enguerrand, sons of that mocker 
of man, the Count de Vandemar.” 

“And they keep a shop! you are jesting.” 

“A shop at which you may buy gloves and per- 
fumes, Rue de la Chaussee d’Antin. Of course 
they don’t serve at the counter ; they only invest 
their pocket-money in the speculation, and in so 
doing — treble at least their pocket-money, buy 
their horses, and keep their grooms.” 

“Is it possible! nobles of such birth! How 
shocked the Count would be if he knew it!” 

“Yes, very much shocked if he was supposed 


to know it. But he is too wise a father not to 
give his sons limited allowances and unlimited 
liberty, especially the liberty to add to the allow- 
ances as they please. Look again at them ; no 
better riders and more affectionate brothers since 
the date of Castor and Pollux. Their tastes, in- 
deed, differ : Raoul is religious and moral, mel- 
ancholy and dignified ; Enguerrand is a lion of 
the first water — elegant to the tips of his nails. 
These demigods are nevertheless very mild to 
mortals. Though Enguerrand is the best pistol- 
shot in Paris, and Raoul the best fencer, the first 
is so good-tempered that you would be a brute to 
quarrel with him ; the last so true a Catholic 
that if you quarreled with him you need fear not 
his sword. He would not die in the committal 
of what the Church holds a mortal sin.” 

“Are you speaking ironically ? Do you mean 
to imply that men .of the name of Vandemar are 
not brave ?” 

“On the contrary, I believe that, though mas- 
ters of their weapons, they are too brave to abuse 
their skill ; and I must add that, though they are 
sleeping partners in a shop, they would not cheat 
you of a farthing. — Benign stars on earth, as 
Castor and Pollux were in heaven.” 

“ But partners in a shop !” 

“Bah! when a minister himself, like the late 

M. de M , kept a shop, and added the profits 

of bonbons to his revenue, you may form some 
idea of the spirit of the age. If young nobles are 
not generally sleeping partners in shops, still they 
are more or less adventurers in commerce. The 
Bourse is the profession of those who have no 
other profession. You have visited the Bourse f' 

“No.” 

“ No ! this is just the hour ; we have time yet 
for the Bois. — Coachman, drive to the Bourse" 

“The fact is,” resumed Frederic, “that gam- 
bling is one of the wants of civilized men. The 
rouge-et-noir and roulette tables are forbidden — 
the hells closed; but the passion for making 
money without working for it must have its vent, 
and that vent is the Bourse. As instead of a 
hundred wax -lights you now have one jet of gas, 
so instead of a hundred hells you have now one 
Bourse., and — it is exceedingly convenient; al- 
ways at hand ; no discredit being seen there, as 
it was to be seen at Frascati’s — on the contrary, 
at once respectable, and yet the mode." 

The coupe stops at the Bourse, our friends 
mount the steps, glide through the pillars, deposit 
their canes at a place destined to guard them, 
and the Marquis follows Frederic up a flight of 
stairs till he gains the open gallery round a vast 
hall below. Such a din ! such a clamor ! dis- 
putatious, wrangling, wrathful. 

Here Lemercier distinguished some friends, 
whom he joined for a few minutes. 

Alain, left alone, looked down into the hall. 
He thought himself in some stormy scene of the 
First Revolution. An English contested election 
in the market-place of a borough when the can- 
didates are running close on each other, the re- 
sult doubtful, passions excited, the whole borough 
in civil war, is peaceful compared to the scene at 
the Bourse. 

Bulls and bears screaming, bawling, gesticulat- 
ing, as if one were about to strangle the other; the 
whole, to an uninitiated eye, a confusion, a Babel, 
which it seems absolutely impossible to reconcile 
to the notion of quiet mercantile transactions, the 


22 


THE PARISIANS. 


purchase and sale of shares and stocks. As Alain 
jiazed bewildered, he felt himself gently touched, 
and, looking round, saw the Englishman. 

“A lively scene!” whispered Mr. Vane. “This 
is the heart of Paris : it beats very loudly.” 

“Is your Bourse in London like this?” 

“I can not tell you; at our Exchange the 
general public are not admitted; the privileged 
priests of that temple sacrifice their victims in 
closed ])enetralia, beyond which the sounds made 
in the operation do not travel to ears profane. 
But had we an Exchange like this open to all 
the world, and placed, not in a region of our 
metropolis unknown to fashion, but in some ele- 
gant square in St. James’s or at Hyde Park Cor- 
ner, I suspect that our national character would 
soon undergo a great change, and that all our 
idlers and sporting men would make their books 
there every day, instead of waiting long months 
in ennui for the Doncaster and the Derby. At 
present we have but few men on the turf ; we 
should then have few men not on Exchange, es- 
pecially if we adopt your law, and can contrive to 
be traders without risk of becoming bankrupts. 
Napoleon I. called us a shop-keeping nation. 
Napoleon HI. has taught France to excel us in 
every thing, and certainly he has made Paris a 
shop-keeping city.” 

Alain thought of Raoul and Enguerrand, and 
blushed to find that what he considered a blot on 
his countrymen was so familiarly perceptible to 
a foreigner’s eye. 

“And the Emperor has done wisely, at least 
for the time,” continued the Englishman, with a 
more thoughtful accent. “He has found vent 
thus for that very dangerous class in Paris soci- 
ety to which the subdivision of property gave 
birth — viz., the crowd of well-born, daring young 
men without fortune and without profession. He 
has opened the Bourse, and said, ‘There, I give 
you employment, resource, an avenir.' He has 
cleared the by-ways into commerce and trade, 
and opened new avenues of wealth to the no- 
blesse, whom the great Revolution so unwisely 
beggared. What other way to rebuild a noblesse 
in France, and give it a chance of powder because 
an access to fortune? But to how' many sides 
of your national character has the Bourse of 
Paris magnetic attraction I You Frenchmen are 
so brave that you could not be happy without 
facing danger, so covetous of distinction that 
you w'ould pine yourselves away without a dash, 
coute que coute, at celebrity and a red ribbon. 
Danger ! look below at that arena — there it is ; 
danger daily, hourly. But there also is celebri- 
ty ; win at the Bourse, as of old in a tourna- 
ment, and paladins smile on you, and ladies give 
3^ou their scarfs, or, w'hat is much the same, they 
allow' 3'ou to buy their cachemires. Win at the 
Bourse — what follows ? the Chamber, the Sen- 
ate, the Cross, the Minister’s portefeuille. I 
might rejoice in all this for the sake of Europe 
— could it last, and did it not bring the conse- 
quences that follow the demoralization which at- 
tends it. The Bourse and the Credit Mobilier 
keep Paris quiet — at least as quiet as it can be. 
These are the secrets of this reign of splendor; 
these the two lio 7 is couchants on w'hich rests the 
throne of the imperial reconstructor.” 

Alain listened surprised and struck. He had 
not given the Englishman credit for the cast of 
mind which such reflections evinced. 


Here Lemercier rejoined them, and shook hands 
with Graham Vane, who, taking him aside, said, 
“But you promised to go to the Bois, and in- 
dulge my insane curiosity about the lady in the 
pearl-colored robe ?” 

“ 1 have not forgotten ; it is not half past tw’o 
j'et ; you said three. Soyez tranquille ; I drive 
thither from the Bourse with Rochebriant. ” 

“Is it necessary to take w'ith you that very 
good-looking Marquis ?” 

“I thought you said j-ou w'ere not jealous, be- 
cause not yet in love. However, if Rochebriant 
occasions you the pang which your humble serv- 
ant failed to inflict, I will take care that he do 
not see the lady.” 

“No,” said the Englishman; “on consider- 
ation, I should be very much obliged to anj' one 
with whom she would fall in love. That would 
disenchant me. Take the Marquis by all means.” 

Meanw'hile Alain, again looking down, saw 
just under him, close b}' one of the pillars, Lu- 
cien Duplessis. He was standing apart from 
the throng — a small space cleared round himself 
— and two men who had the air of gentlemen of 
the beau monde w'ith whom he was conferring. 
Duplessis, thus seen, was not like the Duplessis 
at the restaurant. It would be difficult to ex- 
plain what the change was, but it forcibly struck 
Alain : the air was more dignified, the expres- 
sion keener ; there was a look of conscious pow- 
er and command about the man even at that dis- 
tance ; the intense, concentrated intelligence of 
his eye, his firm lip, his marked features, his pro- 
jecting, massive brow — w'ould have impressed a 
very ordinary observer. In fact, the man w'as 
here in his native element — in the field in which 
his intellect gloried, commanded, and had sig- 
nalized itself by successive triumphs. Just thus 
may be the change in the great orator w hom j'ou 
deemed insignificant in a drawing-room, w'hen 
you see his crest rise above a reverential audi- 
ence ; or the great soldier, who w'as not distin- 
guishable from the subaltern in a peaceful club, 
could you see him issuing the order to his aids- 
de-camp amidst the smoke and roar of the bat- 
tle-field. 

“Ah, Marquis!” said Graham Vane, “are 
3'ou gazing at Duplessis ? He is the modern ge- 
nius of Paris. He is at once the Cousin, the 
Guizot, and the Victor Hugo of speculation. 
Philosophy — Eloquence — audacious Romance — 
all Literature now is swallowed up iu the sub- 
lime epic of Agiotage, and Duplessis is the poet 
of the empire.” 

“Well said, M. Grarm-Varn,” cried Freder- 
ic, forgetting his recent lesson in English names. 
“Alain underrates that great man. How could 
an Englishman appreciate him so well ?” 

“ Ma foi I" returned Graham, quietly ; “I am 
studying to think at Paris, in order some day or 
other to know how to act in London. Time for 
the Bois. Lemercier, we meet at seven — Phi- 
lippe’s.” 


CHAPTER V. 

“What do you think of the Bourse ?" asked 
Lemercier, as their carriage took the way to the 
Bois. 

“ I can not think of it yet ; I am stunned. It 
seems to me as if I had been at a Sabbat, of 


THE PARISIANS. 


23 


■which the wizards were agents de change^ but 
not less bent upon raising Satan.” 

“Pooh! the best way to exorcise Satan is to 
get rich enough not to be tempted by him. The 
fiend always loved to haunt empty places ; and 
of all places nowadays he prefers empty purses 
and empty stomachs.” 

“But do all people get rich at the Bourse ? or 
is not one man’s wealth many men’s ruin ?” 

“ That is a question not very easy to answer ; 
but under our present system Paris gets rich, 
though at the expense of individual Parisians. 
I will try and explain. The average luxury is 
enormously increased even in my experience ; 
what were once considered refinements and fop- 
peries are now called necessary comforts. Prices 
are risen enormously, house rent doubled within 
the last five or six years ; all articles of luxury 
are very much dearer; the very gloves I wear 
cost twenty per cent, more than I used to pay 
for gloves of the same quality. How the people 
we meet live, and live so well, is an enigma that 
would defy (Edipus if CEdipus were not a Paris- 
ian. But the main explanation is this : specu- 
lation and commerce, with the facilities given to 
all investments, have really opened more numer- 
ous and more rapid ways to fortune than were 
known a few years ago. 

“Crowds are thus attracted to Paris, resolved 
to venture a small capital in the hope of a large 
one; they live on that capital, not on their in- 
come, as gamesters do. There is an idea among 
us that it is necessary to seem rich in order to 
become rich. Thus there is a general extrava- 
gance and profusion. English milords marvel at 
our splendor. Those who, while spending their 
capital as their income, fail in their schemes of 
fortune, after one, two, three, or four years — van- 
ish. What becomes of them I know no more 
tiian I do what becomes of the old moons. Their 
})lace is immediately supplied by new candidates. 
Paris is thus kept perennially sumptuous and 
splendid by the gold it ingulfs. But then some 
men succeed — succeed prodigiously, preternatu- 
rally; they make colossal fortunes, which are 
magnificently expended. They set an example 
of show and pomp, which is of course the more 
contagious because so many men say, ‘ The oth- 
er day those millionnaires were as poor as we are ; 
they never economized ; why should we ?’ Paris 
is thus doubly enriched — by the fortunes it swal- 
lows up, and by the fortunes it casts up ; the last 
being always reproductive, and the first never lost 
except to the individuals.” 

“I understand: but what struck me forcibly 
at the scene we have left was the number of 
young men there; young men whom I should 
judge by their appearance to be gentlemen, evi- 
dently not mere spectators — eager, anxious, with 
tablets in their hands. That old or middle-aged 
men should find a zest in the pursuit of gain I 
can understand, but youth and avarice seem to 
me a new combination, which Moli^re never di- 
vined in his Avare” 

“Young men, especially if young gentlemen, 
love pleasure ; and pleasure in this city is very 
dear. This explains why so many young men 
frequent the Bourse. In the old gaming-tables, 
now suppressed, young men were the majority ; 
in the days of your chivalrous forefathers, it was 
the young nobles, not the old, who would stake 
their very mantles and swords on a cast of the 


die. And naturally enough, mon cher ; for is 
not youth the season of hope, and is not Hope 
the goddess of gaming, whether at rouge-et-noir 
or the Bourse 

Alain felt himself more and more behind his 
generation. The acute reasoning of Lemercier 
humbled his amour propre. At college Lemer- 
cier was never considered Alain’s equal in abili- 
ty or book-learning. What a stride beyond his 
school-fellow had Lemercier now made ! How 
dull and stupid the young provincial felt himself 
to be, as compared with the easy cleverness and 
half-sportive philosophy of the Parisian’s fluent 
talk ! 

He sighed with a melancholy and yet with a 
generous envy. He had too fine a natural per- 
ception not to acknowledge that there is a rank 
of mind as well as of birth, and in the first he 
felt that Lemercier might well walk before a 
Rochebriant ; but his very humility was a proof 
that he underrated himself. 

Lemercier did not excel him in mind, but in 
experience. And just as the drilled soldier seems 
a much finer fellow than the raw recruit, because 
he knows how to carry himself, but after a year’s 
discipline the raw recruit may excel in martial 
air the upright hero whom he now despairingly 
admires, and never dreams he can rival, so set 
a mind from a village into the drill of a capital, 
and see it a year after ; it may tower a head 
higher than its recruiting sergeant. 


CHAPTER VI. 

“I BELIEVE,” said Lemercier, as the coupe 
rolled through the lively alleys of the Bois de 
Boulogne, ‘ ‘ that Paris is built on a loadstone, 
and that every Frenchman with some iron glob- 
ules in his blood is irresistibly attracted toward 
it. The English never seem to feel for London 
the passionate devotion that we feel for Paris. 
On the contrary, the London middle class, the 
commercialists, the shop-keepers, t’ne clerks, even 
the superior artisans compelled to do their busi- 
ness in the capital, seem always scheming and 
pining to have their home out of it, though but 
in a suburb.” 

“You have been in London, Frederic ?” 

“Of course; it is the mode to visit that dull 
and hideous metropolis.” 

“If it be dull and hideous, no wonder the peo- 
ple who are compelled to do business in it seek 
the pleasures of home out of it.” 

“It is very droll that, though the middle class 
entirely govern the melancholy Albion, it is the 
only country in Europe in which the middle class 
seem to have no amusements ; nay, they legislate 
against amusement. They have no leisure day 
but Sunday ; and on that day they close all their 
theatres — even their museums and picture-gal- 
leries. What amusements there may be in En- 
gland are for the higher classes and the lowest.” 

“What are the amusements of the lowest 
class ?” 

“ Getting drunk.” 

“Nothing else ?” 

“ Yes. I was taken at night under protection 
of a policeman to some cabarets, where I found 
crowds of that class which is the stratum below 
the working class ; lads who sweep crossings and 


24 


THE PARISIANS. 


hold horses, mendicants, and, I was told, thieves, 
girls whom a servant-maid would not speak to — 
very merry — dancing quadrilles and waltzes, and 
regaling themselves on sausages — the happiest- 
looking folks I found in all London — and, I 
must say, conducting themselves very decently. 

“Ah!” Here Lemercier pulled the check- 
string. “ Will you object to a walk in this quiet 
alley? I see some one whom I have promised 
the Englishman to — But heed me, Alain ; don’t 
fall in love with her.” 


CHAPTER VII. 

The lady in the pearl-colored dress ! Certain- 
ly it was a face that might well arrest the eye and 
linger long on the remembrance. 

There are certain “ beauty-women,” as there 
are certain “ beauty-men,” in whose features one 
detects no fault — who are the show figures of any 
assembly in which they appeal- — but who, some- 
how or other, inspire no sentiment and excite no 
interest ; they lack some expression, whether of 
mind, or of soul, or of heart, without which the 
most beautiful face is but a beautiful picture. 
This lady was not one of those “beauty-wom- 
en.” Her features taken singly were by no 
means perfect, nor were they set off by any brill- 
iancy of coloring. But the countenance aroused 
and impressed the imagination with a belief 
that there was some history attached to it which 
you longed to learn. * The hair, simply parted 
over a forehead unusually spacious and high for 
a woman, was of lustrous darkness ; the eyes, of 
a deep violet blue, were shaded with long lashes. 

Their expression was soft and mournful, but 
unobservant. She did not notice Alain and Le- 
mercier as the two men slowly passed her. She 
seemed abstracted, gazing into space as one ab- 
sorbed in thought or reverie. Her complexion 
was clear and pale, and apparently betokened del- 
icate health. 

Lemercier seated himself on a bench beside the 
path, and invited Alain to do the same. “She 
will return this way soon,” said the Parisian, 
“and we can observe her more attentively and 
more respectfully thus seated than if we were on 
foot; meanwhile, what do you think of her? 
Is she French — is she Italian ? — can she be En- 
glish ?” 

“I should have guessed Italian, judging by the 
darkness of her hair and the outline of tlie feat- 
ures ; but do Italians have so delicate a fairness 
of complexion ?” 

“ Very rarely; and I should guess her to be 
French, judging by the intelligence of her expres- 
sion, the simple neatness of her dress, and by that 
nameless refinement of air in which a Parisienne 
excels all the descendants of Eve — if it were not 
for her eyes. I never saw a Frenchwoman with 
eyes of that peculiar shade of blue ; and if a 
Fj-enchwoman had such eyes, I flatter myself 
she would have scarcely allowed us to pass with- 
out making some use of them.” 

“Do you think she is married?” asked Alain. 

“ I hope so — for a girl of her age, if comme il 
faut, can scarcely walk alone in the Bois, and 
would not have acquired that look so intelligent 
— more than intelligent — so poetic.” 

“But regard that air of unmistakable distinc- 


tion, regard that expression of face — so pure, so 
virginal : comme il faut she must be.” 

As Alain said these last words, the lady, who 
had turned back, was approaching them, and in 
full view of their gaze. She seemed unconscious 
of their existence as before, and Lemercier no- 
ticed that her lips moved as if she were murmur- 
ing inaudibly to herself. 

She did not return again, but continued her 
walk straight on till at the end of the alley she 
entered a carriage in waiting for her, and was 
driven off. 

“Quick, quick!” cried Lemercier, running to- 
ward his own coupe; “we must give chase.” 

Alain followed somewhat less hurriedly, and, 
agreeably to instructions Lemercier had already 
given to his coachman, the Parisian’s coupe set 
off at full speed in the track of the strange lady’s, 
which was still in sight. 

In less than twenty minutes the carriage in chase 
stopped at the grille of one of those charming 
little villas to be found in the pleasant suburb of 
A ; a porter emerged from the lodge, open- 

ed the gate ; the carriage drove in, again stopped 
at the door of the house, and the two gentlemen 
could not catch even a glimpse of the lady’s robe 
as she descended from the carriage and disap- 
peared within the house. 

“I see a cafe yonder,” said Lemercier; “let 
us learn all we can as to the fair unknown, over 
a sorbet or Si petit verre” 

Alain silently, but not reluctantly, consented. 
He felt in the fair stranger an interest new to 
his existence. 

They entered the little cafe, and in a few min- 
utes Lemercier, with the easy savoir vivre of a 
Parisian, had extracted from the gargon as much 
as probably any one in the neighborhood knew 
of the inhabitants of the villa. 

It had been hired and furnished about two 
months previously in the name of Signora Ve- 
nosta ; but* according to the report of the serv- 
ants, the lady appeared to be the gouvernante or 
guardian of a lady much younger, out of whose 
income the villa was rented and the household 
maintained. 

It was for her the coupe was hired from Paris. 
The elder lady very rarely stirred out during the 
day, but always accompanied the younger in any 
evening visits to the theatre or the houses of 
friends. 

It was only within the last few weeks that such 
visits had been made. 

The younger lady was in delicate health, and 
under the care of an English physician famous for 
skill in the treatment of pulmonary complaints. 
It was by his advice that she took daily walking 
exercise in the Bois. The establishment con- 
sisted of three servants, all Italians, and speak- 
ing but imperfect French. The gargon did not 
know whether either of the ladies was married, 
but their mode of life was free from all scandal 
or suspicion ; they probably belonged to the lit- 
erary or musical world, as the gargon had ob- 
served as their visitor the eminent author M. 
Savarin and his wife, and, still more frequently, 
an old man not less eminent as a musical com- 
poser. 

“It is clear to me now,” said Lemercier, as 
the two friends reseated themselves in the car- 
riage, “that our pearly ange is some Italian 
singer of repute enough in her own counti-}’^ to 


THE PARISIANS. 


25 


have gained already a competence; and that, 
perhaps on account of her own health or her 
friend’s, she is living quietly here in the expec- 
mtion of some professional engagement, or the 
absence of some foreign lover.” 

“Lover! do you think that?” exclaimed 
Alain, in a tone of voice that betrayed pain. 

“It is possible enough; and in that case the 
Englishman may profit little by the information 
I have promised to give liim.” 

“You have promised the Englishman ?” 

“Do you not remember last night that he de- 
scribed the lady, and said that her face haunted 
him : and I — ” 

“Ah ! I remember now. What do you know 
of this Englishman ? He is rich, I suppose.” 

“ Yes, I hear he is very rich now ; that an un- 
cle lately left him an enormous sum of money. 
He was attached to the English Embassy many 
years ago, which accounts for his good French 
and his knowledge of Parisian life. He comes 
to Paris very often, and I have known him some 
time. Indeed, he has intrusted to me a difficult 
and delicate commission. The English tell me 
that his father was one of the most eminent mem- 
bers of their Parliament, of ancient birth, very 
highly connected, but ran out his fortune and 
died poor ; that our friend had for some years 
to maintain liimself, I fancy, by his pen ; that 
he is considered very able; and, now that his 
uncle has enriched him, likely to enter public life 
and run a career as distinguished as his father’s.” 

“ Happy man ! happy are the English,” said 
the Marquis, with a sigh ; and as the carriage 
now entered Paris, he pleaded the excuse of an 
engagement, bade his friend good-by, and went 
his way musing through the crowded streets. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

LETTER FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME 
DE GRANTMESNIL. 

“Villa D’ , A . 

“ I can never express to you, my beloved Eu- 
lalie, the strange charm which a letter from you 
throws over my poor little lonely world for days 
after it is received. There is always in it some- 
thing that comforts, something that sustains, but 
also a something that troubles and disquiets me. 
I suppose Goethe is right, ‘ that it is the property 
of true genius to disturb all settled ideas,’ in or- 
der, no doubt, to lift them into a higher level 
when they settle down again. 

“Your sketch of the new work you are medi- 
tating amidst the orange groves of Provence in- 
terests me intensely ; yet, do you forgive me when 
I add that the interest is not without terror. I 
do not find myself able to comprehend how, amidst 
those lovely scenes of nature, your mind volun- 
tarily surrounds itself with images of pain and 
discord. I stand in awe of the calm with which 
you subject to your analysis tbe infirmities of rea- 
son and the tumults of passion. And all those 
laws of the social state which seem to me so fixed 
and immovable you treat with so quiet a scorn, as 
if they were but the gossamer threads which a 
touch of your slight woman’s hand could brush 
away. But I can not venture to discuss such 
subjects with you. It is only the skilled enchant- 
er who can stand safely in the magic circle, and 


compel the spirits that he summons, even if they 
are evil, to minister to ends in which he foresees 
a good. 

“We continue to live here very quietly, and I 
do not as yet feel the worse for the colder climate. 
Indeed, my wonderful doctor, who was recom- 
mended to me as American, but is in reality En- 
glish, assures me that a single winter spent here 
under his care will suffice for my complete re- 
establishment. Yet that career, to the training 
for which so many years have been devoted, does 
not seem to me so alluring as it once did. 

“I have much to say on this subject, which I 
defer till I can better collect my own thoughts on 
it — at present they are confused and struggling. 
The great Maestro has been most gracious. 

“In what a radiant atmosphere his genius 
lives and breathes ! Even in his cynical moods, 
his very cynicism has in it the ring of a jocund 
music — the laugh of Figaro, not of Mephistoph- 
eles. 

“We went to dine with him last week; he 

invited to meet us Madame S , who has this 

year conquered all opposition, and reigns alone, 
the great S , Mr. T , a pianist of admira- 

ble promise — your friend M. Savarin, wit, critic, 
and poet, with his pleasant sensible wife, and a 
few others whom the Maestro confided to me in 
a whisper were authorities in the press. After 

dinner S sang to us, magnificently, of course. 

Then she herself graciously turned to me, said 
how much she had heard from the Maestro in 
my praise, and so-and-so. I was persuaded 
to sing after her. I need not say to what disad- 
vantage. But I forgot my nervousness ; I for- 
got my audience ; I forgot myself, as I always 
do when once my soul, as it were, finds wing 
in music, and buoys itself in air, relieved from 
the sense of earth. I knew not that I had suc- 
ceeded till I came to a close, and then my eyes 
resting on the face of the grand privia donna, I 
was seized with an indescribable sadness — with 
a keen pang of remorse. Perfect artiste though 
she be, and with powers in her own realm of art 
which admit of no living equal, I saw at once 
that I had pained her ; she had grown almost 
livid ; her lips were quivering, and it was only 
with a great effort that she muttered out some 
faint words intended for applause. I compre- 
hended by an instinct how gradually there can 
grow upon the mind of an artist the most gener- 
ous that jealousy which makes the fear of a rival 
annihilate the delight in art. If ever I should 

achieve S ’s fame as a singer, should I feel 

the same jealousy ? I think not now, but I have 
not been tested. She went away abruptly. I 
spare you the recital of the compliments paid to 
me by my other auditors, compliments that gave 
me no pleasure ; for on all lips, except those of 
the Maestro, they implied, as the height of eu- 
logy, that I had inflicted torture upon S . 

‘If so,’ said he, ‘she would be as foolish as a 
rose that was jealous of the whiteness of a lily. 
You would do yourself great wrong, my child, if 
you tried to vie with the rose in its own color.’ 

“ He patted my bended head as he spoke, with 
that kind of fatherly king -like fondness with 
which he honors me; and I took his hand in 
mine, and kissed it gratefully. ‘Nevertheless,’ 
said Savarin, ‘ when the lily comes out there will 
be a furious attack on it, made by the clique that 
devotes itself to the rose : a lily clique will be 


26 


THE PARISIANS. 


formed en revanche, .and I foresee a fierce paper 
war. Ho not be friglitened at its first outburst ; 
every fame worth having must be fought for.’ 

“ Is it so ? have you had to fight for your fame, 
Eulalie ? and do you hate all contest as much as 
I do? 

‘ ‘ Our only other gayety since I last wrote was a 
soiree at M. Louvier’s. That republican million- 
naire was not slow in attending to the kind letter 
you addressed to him recommending us to his 
civilities. He called at once, placed his good 
ofiices at our disposal, took charge of my mod- 
est fortune, which he has invested, no doubt, as 
safely as it is advantageously in point of interest, 
hired our carriage for us, and in short has been 
most amiably useful. 

“ At his house we met many to me most pleas- 
ant, for they spoke with such genuine apprecia- 
tion of your works and yourself. But there were 
others whom I should never have expected to 
meet under the roof of a Croesus who has so great ' 
a stake in the order of things established. One 
young man — a noble whom he specially present- 
ed to me, as a politician who would be at the 
head of affairs when the Red Republic was es- 
tablished — asked me whether I did not agree 
with him that all private property was public 
spoliation, and that the great enemy to civiliza- 
tion was religion, no matter in what foi m. 

“ He addressed to me these tremendous ques- 
tions with an effeminate lisp, and harangued on 
them with small feeble gesticulations of pale dain- 
ty fingers covered with rings. 

“I asked him if there were many who in 
France shared his ideas. 

“ ‘ Quite enough to carry them some d.ay,’ he 
answered, with a lofty smile. ‘And the day 
may be nearer than the world thinks, when my 
confreres will be so numerous that they will have 
to shoot down each other for the sake of cheese 
to their bread.’ 

“That day nearer than the world thinks! 
Certainly, so far as one m.ay judge the outward 
signs of the world at Paris, it does not think of 
such things at all. With what an air of self-con- 
tent the beautiful city parades her riches ! Who 
can gaze on her splendid palaces, her gorgeous 
shops, and believe that she will give ear to doc- 
trines that would annihilate private rights of 
property; or who can enter her crowded church- 
es, and dream that she can ever again install a re- 
public too civilized for religion ? 

“Adieu. Excuse me for this dull letter. If 
I have written on much that has little interest 
even for me, it is that I wish to distract my mind 
from brooding over the question that interests me 
most, and on which I most need your counsel. 

I will try to approach it in my next. 

“ ISAURA.” 


FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 

“ Euhalie, Eulalie ! — What mocking spirit has 
been permitted in this modern age of ours to 
place in the heart of woman the ambition which 
is the prerogative of men ? — You, indeed, so rich- 
ly endowed with a man’s genius, have a right to 
man’s aspirations. But what can justify such 
ambition in me ? Nothing but this one unintel- 
lectual perishable gift of a voice that does but 
please in uttering the thoughts of others. Doubt- 
less I could make a name familiar for its brief 


time to the talk of Europe — a name, what name ? 
a singer’s name. Once I thought that name .a 
gloiy. Shall I ever forget the day when you first 
shone upon me ; when, emerging from childhood 
as from a dim and solitary by-path, I stood for- 
lorn on the great thoroughfare of life, and all the 
prospects before me stretched sad in mists and in 
rain ? You beamed on me then as the sun com- 
ing out from the cloud and changing the face of 
eai’th ; you opened to my sight the fairy-land of 
poetry and art ; you took me by the hand and 
said, ‘ Courage ! there is at each step some green 
gap in the hedge-rows, some soft escape from the 
•stony thoroughfare. Beside the real life expands 
the ideal life to those who seek it. Droop not, 
seek it ; the ideal life has its sorrows, but it nev- 
er admits despair ; as on the ear of him who fol- 
lows the winding course of a streanj, the stream 
ever varies the note of its music, ^ow loud with 
the rush of the falls, now low and calm as it glides 
' by the level marge of smooth banks ; now sigh- 
ing through the stir of the reeds, now babbling 
with a fretful joy as some sudden curve on the 
shore stays its flight among gleaming pebbles ; 
so to the soul of the artist is the voice of the art 
ever fleeting beside and before him. Nature 
gave thee the bird’s gift of song — raise the gift 
into art, and make the art thy companion. 

“ ‘Art and Hope were twin-born, and they die 
together.’ 

“See how faithfully I remember, methinks, 
your very words. But the magic of the words, 
which I then but dimly understood, was in your 
smile and in your eye, and the queen-like wave 
of your hand as if beckoning to a world which 
lay before you, visible and familiar as your native 
land. And how devotedly, with what earnestness 
of passion, I gave myself up to the task of raising 
my gift into an art ! I thought of nothing else, 
dreamed of nothing else ; and oh, how sweet to 
me then were words of praise ! ‘ Another year 

yet,’ at length said the masters, ‘ and you ascend 
your throne among the queens of song.’ Then 
— then — I would have changed for no other 
throne on earth my hope of that to be achieved 
in the realms of my art. And then came that 
long fever : my strength bioke down, and the 
Maestro said, ‘ Rest, or your voice is gone, and 
your throne is lost forever.’ How hateful that 
rest seemed to me ! You again came to my aid. 
You said, ‘The time you think lost should be but 
time improved. Penetrate your mind with oth- 
er songs than the trash of Libretti. The more 
you habituate yourself to the forms, the more you 
imbue yourself with the spirit, in which passions 
have been expressed and character delineated by 
great writers, the more completely you will ac- 
complish yourself in your own special art of sing- 
er and actress.’ So, then, you allured me to a 
new study. Ah ! in so doing did you dream 
that you diverted me from the old ambition ? 
My knowledge of French and Italian, and my 
rearing in childhood, which had made English 
familiar to me, gave me the keys to the treasure- 
houses of three languages. Naturally I began 
with that in which your masterpieces are com- 
posed. Till then I had not even read your works. 
They were the first I chose. How they impress- 
ed, how they startled me I what depths in the 
mind of man, in the heart of woman, they reveal- 
ed to me ! But I owned to you then, and I re- 
peat it now, neither they nor any of the works in 


THE PARISIANS. 


27 


romance and poetry which form the boast of re- 
cent French literature, satisfied yearnings for that 
calm sense of beauty, that divine joy in a world 
beyond this world, which you had led me to be- 
lieve it was the prerogative of ideal art to bestow. 
And when I told you this with the rude frank- 
ness you had bid me exercise in talk with you, a 
thoughtful melancholy shade fell over your face, 
and you said, quietly, ‘ You are right, child ; we, 
the French of our time, are the offspring of revo- 
lutions that settled nothing, unsettled all : we re- 
semble those troubled states which rush into war 
abroad in order to re-establish peace at home. 
Our books suggest problems to men for recon- 
structing some social system in which the calm 
that belongs to art may be found at last : but 
* such books should not be in your hands ; they 
are not for the innocence and youth of women, 
as yet unchanged by the systems which exist.’ 
And the next day you brought me Tasso’s great 
poem, the Germalemme Liberata^ and said, smil- 
ing, ^ Art in its calm is here.’ 

“You remember that I was then at Sorrento 
by the order of my physician. Never shall I for- 
get the soft autumn day Avhen I sat among the 
lonely rocklets to the left of the town — the sea 
l)efore me, with scarce a ripple ; my very heart 
steeped in the melodies of that poem, so marvel- 
ous for a strength disguised in sweetness, and for 
a symmetry in which each proportion blends into 
t!ie other with the perfectness of a Grecian statue, 
'riia whole place seemed to me filled with the pres- 
ence of the poet to whom it had given birth. Cer- 
tainly the reading of that poem formed an era in 
my existence ; to this day I can not acknowledge 
the faults or weaknesses which your criticisms 
pointed out — I believe because they are in unison 
with my own nature, which yearns for harmony, 
and, finding that, rests contented. I shrink from 
violent contrasts, and can discover nothing tame 
and insipid in a continuance of sweetness and se- 
renity. But it was not till after I had read La 
Gerusalemme again and again, and then sat and 
brooded over it, that I recognized the main charm 
of the poem in the religion which clings to it as 
the perfume clings to a flower — a religion some- 
times melancholy, but never to me sad. Hope 
always pervades it. Surely if, as you said, ‘ Hope 
is twin-born with art,’ it is because art at its high- 
est blends itself unconsciously with religion, and 
proclaims its affinity with hope by its faith in 
some future good more perfect than it has real- 
ized in the past. 

“Be this as it may, it was in this poem so 
pre-eminently Christian that I found the some- 
thing which I missed and craved for in modern 
French masterpieces, even yours — a something 
spiritual, speaking to my own soul, calling it forth ; 
distinguishit)g it as an essence apart from mere 
human reason ; soothing, even when it excited ; 
making earth nearer to heaven. And when I 
ran on in this strain to you after my own wild fash- 
ion, you took my head between your hands and 
kissed me, and said, ‘ Happy are those who be- 
lieve ! long may that happiness be thine !’ Why 
did I not feel in Dante the Christian charm that 
1 felt in Tasso ? Dante in your eyes, as in those 
of most judges, is infinitely the greater genius, 
but reflected on the dark stream of that genius 
the stars are so troubled, the heavens so threat- 
ening. 

“Just as my year of holiday was expiring I 


turned to English literature ; and Shakspeare, 
of course, was the first English poet put into my 
hands. It proves how child-like my mind still 
was, that my earliest sensation in reading him 
was that of disappointment. It was not only that, 
despite my familiarity with English (thanks chief- 
ly to the care of him whom I call my second 
father), there is much in the metaphorical dic- 
tion of Shakspeare which I failed to comprehend ; 
but he seemed to me so far like the modern French 
writers who affect to have found inspiration in 
his muse, that he obtrudes images of pain and 
suffering without cause or motive sufficiently clear 
to ordinary understandings, as I had taught my- 
self to think it ought to be in the drama. 

“He makes Fate so cruel that we lose sight 
of the mild deity behind her. Compare, in 
this, Corneille’s Polyeticte with the Hamlet. In 
the first an equal calamity befalls the good, but 
in their calamity they are blessed. The death 
of the martyr is the triumph of his creed. But 
when we have put down the English tragedy — 
when Hamlet and Ophelia are confounded in 
death with Folonius and the fratricidal king, we 
see not what good end for humanity is achieved. 
The passages that fasten on our memory do not 
make us happier and holier ; they suggest but 
terrible problems, to which they give us no solu- 
tion. 

“In the Horaces of Corneille there are fierce 
contests, rude passions, tears drawn from some 
of the bitterest sources of human pity ; but then 
through all stands out, large and visible to the 
eyes of all spectators, the great ideal of devoted 
patriotism. How much of all that has been grand- 
est in the life of France, redeeming even its \yorst 
crimes of revolution in the love of country, has 
had its origin in the Horaces of Corneille ! But 
I doubt if the fates of Coriolanus, and Caesar, 
and Brutus, and Antony, in the giant tragedies 
of Shakspeare, have made Englishmen more 
willing to die for England. In fine, it was long 
before — I will not say I understood or right- 
ly appreciated Shakspeare, for no Englishman 
would admit that I or even you could ever do 
so — but before I could recognize the justice 
of the place his country claims for him as the 
genius without an equal in the literature of 
Europe. Meanwhile, the ardor I had put into 
study, and the wear and tear of the emotions 
which the study called forth, made themselves 
felt in a return of my former illness, with symp- 
toms still more alarming ; and when the year was 
out, I was ordained to rest for perhaps another 
year before I could sing in public, still less ap- 
pear on the stage. How I rejoiced when I heard 
that fiat, for I emerged from that year of study 
with a heart utterly estranged from the profession 
in which I had centred my hopes before — Yes, 
Eulalie, you had bid me accomplish myself for 
the arts of utterance by the study of arts in which 
thoughts originate the words they employ, and 
in doing so I had changed myself into another 
being. I was forbidden all fatigue of mind ; my. 
books were banished, but not the new self which 
the books had formed. Recovering slowly through 
the summer, I came hither two months since, 

ostensibly for the advice of Dr. C , but really 

in the desire to commune with my own heart, 
and be still. 

“And now I have poured forth that heart to 
you — would you persuade me still to be a singer ? 


28 


THE PAKISIANS. 


If you do, remember at least how jealous and ab- 
sorbing the art of the singer and of the actress 

is. How completely I must surrender myself to 

it, and live among books, or among dreams, no 
more. Can I be any thing else but singer ? and 
if not, should I be contented merely to read and 
to dream ? 

“ I must confide to you one ambition which 
during the lazy Italian summer took possession of 
me — I must tell you the ambition, and add that 
I have renounced it as a vain one. I had hoped 
that I could compose, I mean in music. I was 
pleased with some things I did — they expressed 
in music what I could not express in words ; and 
one secret object in coming here was to submit 
them to the great Maestro. He listened to them 
patiently ; he complimented me on my accuracy 
in the mechanical laws of composition ; he even 
said that my favorite airs were ‘ touchants et gra- 
cieux. ’ 

“ And so he would have left me, but I stopped 
bim timidly, and said, ‘ Tell me frankly, do you 
think that with time and study I could compose 
music such as singers equal to mvself would sing 
to?’ 

“ ‘ You mean as a professional composer?’ 

‘“Well, yes.’ 

“ ‘ And to the abandonment of your vocation 
as a singer ?’ 

“ ‘Yes.’ 

“ ‘ My dear child, I should be your worst en- 
emy if I encouraged such a notion ; cling to the 
career in which you can be greatest ; gain but 
health, and I wager my reputation on your glori- 
ous success on the stage. What can you be as a 
composer ? You will set pretty music to pretty 
words, and will be sung in drawing-rooms with 
the fame a little more or less that generally at- 
tends the compositions of female amateurs. Aim 
at something higher, as I know you would do, 
and you will not succeed. Is there any instance 
in modern times, perhaps in any times, of a fe- 
male composer who attains even to the eminence 
of a third-rate opera writer? Composition in 
letters may be of no sex. In that Madame Du- 
devant and your friend Madame de Grantmesnil 
can beat most men ; but the genius of musical 
composition is homme, and accept it as a compli- 
ment when I say that you are essentially femme.' 

“ He left me, of course, mortified and hum- 
bled ; but I feel he is right as regards myself, 
though whether in his depreciation of our whole 
sex I can not say. But as this hope has left me, 
I have become more disquieted, still more rest- 
less. Counsel me, Eulalie ; counsel, and, if pos- 
sible, comfort me. Isaura.” 


FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 

“No letter from you yet, and I have left you 
in peace for ten days. How do you think I have 
spent them ? The Maestro called on us with M. 
Savarin, to insist on our accompanying them on 
a round of the theatres. I had not been to one 
since my arrival. I divined that the kind-heart- 
ed composer had a motive in this invitation. He 
thought that in witnessing the applauses bestowed 
on actors, and sharing in the fascination in which 
theatrical illusion holds an audience, my old pas- 
sion for the stage, and with it the longing for an 
artiste's fame, would revive. 

“In my heart I wished that his expectations 


might be realized. Well for me if I could once 
more concentre all my aspirations on a prize with- 
in my reach ! 

“We went first to see a comedy greatly in 
vogue, and the author thoroughly understands the 
French stage of our day. The acting was excel- 
lent in its way. The next night we went to the 
Odeon, a romantic melodrama in six acts, and 1 
know not how many tableaux. I found no fault 
with the acting there. I do not give you the rest 
of our programme. We visited all the principal 

theatres, reserving the opera and Madame S 

for the last. Before I speak of the opera, let me 
say a word or two on the plays. 

“ There is no country in which the theatre has 
so great a hold on the public as in France ; no 
country in which the successful dramatist has so 
high a fame ; no country, perhaps, in which the 
state of the stage so faithfully represents the mor- 
al and intellectual condition of the people. I say 
this not, of course, from my experience of coun- 
tries which I have not visited, but from all I hear 
of the stage in Germany and in England. 

“The impression left on my mind by the per- 
formances I witnessed is, that the French people 
are becoming dwarfed. The comedies that please 
them are but pleasant caricatures of petty sections 
in a corrupt society. They contain no large types 
of human nature; their witticisms convey no 
luminous flashes of truth ; their sentiment is not 
pure and noble — it is a sickly and false perversion 
of the impure and ignoble into travesties of the 
pure and noble. 

“Their melodramas can not be classed as lit- 
erature — all that really remains of the old French 
genius is its vaudeville. 

“Great dramatists create great parts. One 
great part, such as a liachel would gladly .have 
accepted, I have not seen in the dramas of the 
young generation. 

“ High art has taken refuge in the opera ; but 
that is not French opera. I do not complain so 
much that French taste is less refined. I com- 
plain that French intellect is lowered. The de- 
scent from Polyeucie to Ruy Bias is great, not so 
much in the poetry of form as in the elevation of 
thought; but the descent from Ruy Bias to the 
best drama now produced is out of poetry' alto- 
gether, and into those flats of prose which give 
not even the glimpse of a mountain-top. 

“But now to the opera. S in Norma! 

The house was crowded, and its enthusiasm as 

loud as it was genuine. You tell me that S 

never rivaled Pasta, but certainly her Nonna is 
a great performance. Her voice has lost less of 
its freshness than I had been told, and what is 
lost of it her practiced management conceals or 
carries ofl’. 

‘ ‘ The Maestro was quite right — I could never 
vie with her in her own line ; but conceited and 
vain as I may seem even to you in saying so, I 
feel in my own line that I could command as 
large an applause — of course taking into account 
my brief-lived advantage of youth. Her acting, 
apart from her voice, does not please me. It 
seems to me to want intelligence of the subtler 
feelings, the under-current of emotion, which con- 
stitutes the chief beauty of the situation and the 
character. Am I jealous when I say this? 
Bead on and judge. 

“On our return that night, when I had seen 
the Venosta to bed, I went into my own room, 


THE PARISIANS. 


2*S 


opened the window, and looked out. • A lovely 
night, mild as in spring at Florence — the moon 
at her full, and the stars looking so calm and so 
high beyond our reach of their tranquillity. The 
evergreens in the gardens of the villas around me 
silvered over, and the summer boughs, not yet 
clothed with leaves, were scarcely visible amidst 
the changeless smile of the laurels. At the dis- 
tance lay Paris, only to be known by its innu- 
merable lights. And then I said to myself, 

“No, I can not be an actress ; I can not re- 
sign my real self for that vamped-up hypocrite 
before the lamps. Out on those stage robes and 
painted cheeks ! Out on that simulated utterance 
of sentiments learned by rote and practiced before 
the looking-glass till every gesture has its drill ! 

“Then I gazed on those stars which provoke 
our questionings, and return no answer, till my 
heart grew full, so full, and I bowed my head and 
wept like a child. ” 


FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 

“And still no letter from you! I see in the 
journals that you have left Nice. Is it that you 
are too absorbed in your work to have leisure to 
w'rite to me ? I know you are not ill ; for if you 
were, all Paris would know of it. All Europe 
has an interest in your health. Positively I will 
write to you no more till a word from yourself 
bids me do so. 

“I fear I must give up my solitaiy walks in 
the Bois de Boulogne : they were very dear to 
me, partly because the quiet path to which I con- 
fined myself was that to which you directed me 
as the one you habitually selected when at Paris, 
and in which you had brooded over and revolved 
the loveliest of your romances ; and partly be- 
cause it was there that, catching, alas I not in- 
spiration but enthusiasm from the genius that 
had hallowed the place, and dreaming I might 
originate music, I nursed my own aspirations and 
munnured my own airs. And though so close 
to that world of Paris to which all artists must 
appeal for judgment or audience, the spot was so 
undisturbed, so sequestered. But of late that 
path has lost its solitude, and therefore its charm. 

“Six days ago the first person I encountered 
in my walk was a man whom I did not then 
heed. He seemed in thought, or rather in rev- 
erie, like myself ; we passed each other twice or 
thrice, and I did not notice whether he was 
young or old, tall or short ; but he came the next 
day, and a third day, and then I saw that he was 
young, and, in so regarding him, his eyes became 
fixed on mine. The fourth day he did not come, 
but two other men came, and the look of one 
was inquisitive and offensive. They sat them- 
selves down on a bench in the walk, and though 
I did not seem to notice them, I hastened home : 
and the next day, in talking Avith our kind Ma- 
dame Savarin, and alluding to these quiet walks 
of mine, she hinted, with the delicacy which is 
her characteristic, that the customs of Paris did 
not allow demoiselles comme il faut to walk alone 
even in the most sequestered paths of the Bois. 

“I begin now to comprehend your disdain of 
customs which impose chains so idly galling on 
the liberty of our sex. 

“We dined with the Savarins last evening: 
what a joyous nature he has ! Not reading Lat- 
in, I only know Horace by translations, which I 


am told are bad ; but Savarin seems to me a sort 
of half Horace. Horace on his town-bred side, 
so playfully well-bred, so good-humored in his: 
philosophy, so affectionate to friends, and so bit- 
ing to foes. But certainly Savarin could not have 
lived in a country farm upon endives and mal- 
lows. He is town-bred and Parisian, jusqu'aii 
hout des angles. How he admires you, and how 
I love him for it 1 Only in one thing he disap- 
points me there. It is your style that he chiefly 
praises: certainly that style is matchless; but 
style is only the clothing of thought, and to praise 
your style seems to me almost as invidious as the 
compliment to some perfect beauty, not on her 
form and face, but on her taste in dress. 

“We met at dinner an American and his wife 
— a Colonel and Mrs. Morley : she is delicately 
handsome, as the American women I have seen 
generally are, and with that frank vivacity of 
manner Avhich distinguishes them from English 
women. She seemed to take a fancy to me, and 
we soon grew veiy good friends. 

“She is the first advocate I have met, except 
yourself, of that doctrine upon the Rights of 
Women — of which one reads more in the jour- 
nals than one hears discussed in salons. 

“Naturally enough I felt great interest in that 
subject, more especially since my rambles in the 
Bois Avere forbidden ; and as long as she declaim- 
ed on the hard fate of the Avomen AA’ho, feeling 
Avithin them powers that struggle for air and light 
beyond the close precinct of household duties, 
find themselA’es restricted from fair rh^alry with 
men in such fields of knoAvledge and toil and 
glory as men since the world began have appro- 
priated to themselves, I need not say that I Avent 
Avith her cordially : you can guess that by my 
former letters. But when she entered into th£ 
detailed catalogue of our exact Avrongs and our 
exact rights, I felt all the pusillanimity of my 
sex, and shrank back in terror. 

“Her husband, joining us when she w^as in 
full tide of eloquence, smiled at me with a kind 
of saturnine mirth. ‘Mademoiselle, don’t be- 
lieve a Avord she says ; it is only tall talk ! In 
America the women are absolute tyrants, and it 
is I who, in concert with my oppressed countiy- 
men, am going in for a platform agitation to re- 
store the Rights of Men.’ 

“Upon this there Avas a lively battle of words 
between the spouses, in which, I must OAvn, I 
thought the lady was decidedly worsted. 

“No, Eulalie, I see nothing in these schemes 
for altering our relations toward the other sex 
Avhich would improve our condition. The ine- 
qualities Ave suffer are not imposed by law — not 
even by convention ; they are imposed by nature. 

“Eulalie, you haA’e had an experience un- 
knoAA'n to me ; you have loved. In that day did 
you — you, round w’hom poets and sages and 
statesmen gather, listening to your words as to 
an oracle — did you feel that your pride of genius 
had gone out from you — that your ambition lived 
in him whom you loved — that his smile was more 
to you than the applause of a world ? 

“ I feel as if love in a Avoman must destroy her 
rights of equality — that it gives to her a sovereign 
even in one Avho would be inferior to herself if 
her love did not glorify and croAvn him. Ah ! 
if I could but merge this terrible egotism which 
oppresses me into the being of some one Avho is 
what I would Avish to be Avere I man 1 I would 


{30 


THE TARISIANS. 


not ask him to achieve fame. Enough if I felt 
that he was worthy of it, and hap{)ier methinks 
to console him when he failed than to triumph 
with him when he won. Tell me, have you felt 
this? When you loved, did you stoop as to a 
slave, or did you bow down as to a master ?” 


FROM MADAME DE GKANTMESNIL TO ISAURA 
CICOGNA. 

“Chere enfant, — All your four letters have 
reached me the same day. In one of my sud- 
den whims I set off with a few friends on a rapid 
tour along the Riviera to Genoa, thence to Turin 
on to Milan. Not knowing where we should rest 
even for a day, my letters were not forwarded. 

“I came back to Nice yesterday, consoled for 
all fatigues in having insured that accuracy in de- 
scription of localities which my work necessitates. 

“You are, my poor child, in that revolution- 
ary crisis through which genius passes in youth 
before it knows its own self, and longs vaguely 
to do or to be a something other than it has done 
or has been before. For, not to be unjust to your 
own powers, genius you have — that inborn unde- 
linable essence, including talent, and yet distinct 
from it. Genius you have, but genius unconcen- 
trated, undisciplined. I see, though you are too 
diffident to say so openly, that you shrink from 
the fame of singer, because, fevered by your read- 
ing, you would fain aspire to the thorny crown 
of author. I echo the hard saying of the Maestro, 
I should be your worst enemy did I encourage 
you to forsake a career in which a dazzling suc- 
cess is so assured, for one in which, if it were 
your true vocation, you would not ask whether 
you were fit for it ; you would be impelled to it 
by the terrible star which presides over the birth 
of poets. 

“Have you, who are so naturally obseivant, 
and of late have become so reflective, never re- 
marked that authors, however absorbed in their 
own craft, do nbt wish their children to adopt it ? 
The most successful author is perhaps the last 
jjerson to whom neophytes should come for en- 
couragement. This I think is not the case with 
the cultivators of the sister arts. The painter, 
the sculptor, the musician, seem disposed to invite 
tUsciples and welcome acolytes. As for those en- 
gaged in the practical affairs of life, fathers mostly 
wish their sons to be as they have been. 

“The politician, the lawyer, the merchant, each 
says to his children, ‘Follow my steps.’ All 
parents in practical life would at least agree in 
this — they would not wish their sons to be poets. 
There must be some sound cause in the world’s 
philosophy for this general concuirence of digres- 
sion from a road of which the travelers themselves 
say to those whom they love best, ‘Beware!’ 

“Romance in youth is, if rightly understood, 
the happiest nutriment of wisdom in after-years ; 
but I would never invite any one to look upon 
the romance of youth as a thing 

‘“To case in periods and embalm in ink.’ 

Enfant, have you need of a publisher to cre- 
ate romance? Is it not in yourself? Do not im- 
agine that genius requires for its enjoyment the 
scratch of the pen and the types of the printer. 
Do not suppose that the poet, the romancier, is 
most poetic, most romantic, when he is striving, 
struggling, laboring, to check the rush of his 


ideas, and materialize the images which visit him 
as souls into such tangible likenesses of flesh and 
blood that the highest compliment a reader can 
bestow on them is to say that they are life-like. 
No : the poet’s real delight is not in the mechan- 
ism of composing; the best part of that delight 
is in the sympatiiies he has established with in- 
numerable modifications of life and form, and 
art and nature — sympathies which are often found 
equally keen in those who have not the same gift 
of language. The poet is but the interpreter. 
What of? — Truths in the hearts of others. He 
utters what they feel. Is the joy in the utter- 
ance ? Nay, it is in the feeling itself. So, my 
dear, dark-bright child of song, when I bade thee 
open, out of the beaten thoroughfare, paths into 
the meads and river-banks at either side of the 
formal hedge-rows, rightly dost thou add that I 
enjoined thee to make thine art thy companion. 
In the culture of that art for which you are so 
eminently gifted, you will find the ideal life ever 
beside the real. Are you not ashamed to tell 
me that in that art you do but utter the thoughts 
of others? You utter them in music; through 
the music you not only give to the thoughts a 
new character, but you make them reproductive 
of fresh thoughts in your audience. 

“You said very truly that you found in com- 
posing you could put into music thoughts which 
you could not put into words. That is the pe- 
culiar distinction of music. No genuine musi- 
cian can explain in words exactly what he means 
to convey in his music. 

“ How little a libretto interprets an opera — how 
little we care even to read it! It is the music 
that speaks to us ; and how ? — through the hu- 
man voice. We do not notice how poor are the 
words which the voice warbles. It is the voice 
itself interpreting the soul of the musician whicli 
enchants and inthralls us. And you who have 
that voice pretend to despise the gift. What! 
despise the power of communicating delight! — 
the power that we authors envy ; and rarely, if 
ever, can we give delight with so little alloy as 
the singer. 

“And when an audience disperses, can you 
guess what griefs the singer may have comforted? 
what hard hearts he may have softened? what 
high thoughts he may have awakened ? 

“You say, ‘Out on the vamped-up hypocrite! 
Out on the stage robes and painted cheeks!’ 

“I say, ‘Out on the morbid .spirit which so 
cynically regards the mere details by which a 
whole effect on the minds and hearts and souls 
of races and nations can be produced!’ 

“There, have I scolded you sufficiently? I 
should scold you more, if I did not see in the 
affluence of your youth and your intellect the 
cause of your restlessness. 

‘ ‘ Riches are always restless. It is only to 
poverty that the gods give content. 

“You question me about love: you ask me if 
I have ever bowed to a master, ever merged my 
life in another’s ; expect no answer on this from 
me. Circe herself could give no answer to the 
simplest maid, who, never having loved, asks, 

‘ What is love ?’ 

“In the history of the passions each human 
heart is a world in itself: its experience profits 
no others. In no two lives does love play the 
same part or bequeath the same record. 

“ I know not whether I am glad or sorry that 


THE PARISIANS. 


31 


the word ‘ love’ now falls on my ear with a sound 
as slight and as faint as the dropping of a leaf in 
autumn may fall on thine. 

“ I volunteer but this lesson, the wisest I can 
give, if thou canst understand it : as I bade thee 
take art into thy life, so learn to look on life itself 
as an art. Thou couldst discover the charm in 
Tasso; thou couldst perceive that the requisite 


of all art, that which pleases, is in the harmony 
of proportion. We lose sight of beauty if we ex- 
aggerate the feature most beautiful. 

“Love proportioned, adorns the homeliest ex- 
istence ; love disproportioned, deforms the fairest, 
“ Alas ! wilt thou remember this wanting when 
the time comes in which it may be needed ? 

“E G 


BOOK SECOND. 


CHAPTER I. 

It is several weeks after the date of the last 
chapter ; the lime - trees in the Tuileries are 
clothed in green. 

In a somewhat spacious apartment on the 
ground -floor in the quiet locality of the Rue 
d’ Anjou a man was seated, very still, and evi- 
dently absorbed in deep thought, before a writ- 
ing-table placed close to the window. 

Seen thus, there was an expression of great 
power both of intellect and of character in a face 
Avhich, in ordinary social commune, might rather 
be noticeable for an aspect of hardy frankness, 
suiting well with the clear-cut, handsome profile, 
and the rich dark auburn hair, waving carelessly 
over one of those broad open foreheads which, 
according to an old writer, seem the “frontis- 
piece of a temple dedicated to Honor.” 

The forehead, indeed, was the man’s most re- 
markable feature. It could not but prepossess 
the beholder. When, in private theatricals, he 
had need to alter the character of his counte- 
nance, he did it effectually, merely by forcing 
down his hair till it reached his eyebrows. He 
no longer then looked like the same man. 

The person I describe has been already intro- 
duced to the reader as Graham Vane. But per- 
haps this is the fit occasion to enter into some 
such details as to his parentage and position as 
may make the introduction more satisfactory and 
complete. 

His father, the representative of a very ancient 
family, came into possession, after a long minori- 
ty, of what may be called a fair squire’s estate, 
and about half a million in moneyed investments, 
inherited on the female side. Both land and 
money were absolutely at his disposal, unencum- 
bered by entail or settlement. He was a man 
of a brilliant, irregular genius, of princely gener- 
osity, of splendid taste, of a gorgeous kind of 
pride closely allied to a masculine kind of vanity. 
As soon as he was of age he began to build, con- 
verting his squire’s hall into a ducal palace. He 
then stood for the county; and in days before 
the first Reform Bill, when a county election was 
to the estate of a candidate what a long war is 
to the debt of a nation. He won the election ; 
he obtained early successes in Parliament. It 
was said by good authorities in political circles 
that, if he chose, he might aspire to lead his par- 
ty, and ultimately to hold the first rank in the 
government of his country. 

That may or may not be true ; but certainly 
he did not choose to take the trouble necessary 
for such an ambition. He was too fond of pleas- 
ure, of luxurv, of pomp. He kept a famous stud 
C 


of racers and hunters. He was a munificent pa- 
tron of art. His establishments, his entertain- 
ments, were on a par with those of the great no- 
ble who represented the loftiest (Mr. Vane would 
not own it to be the eldest) branch of his genea- 
logical tree. 

He became indifferent to political contests, in- 
dolent in his attendance at the House, speaking 
seldom, not at great length nor with much prep- 
aration, but with power and fire, originality and 
genius ; so that he was not only effective as an 
orator, but, combining with eloquence advantages 
of birth, person, station, the reputation of patri- 
otic independence, and genial atti ibutes of char- 
acter, he was an authority of weight in the scales 
of party. 

This gentleman, at the age of forty, married 
the dowerless daughter of a poor but distinguish- 
ed naval officer, of noble family, first cousin to 
the Duke of Alton. 

He settled on her a suitable jointure, but de- 
clined to tie up any portion of his property for 
the benefit of children by the marriage. He de- 
clared that so much of his fortune was invested 
either in mines, the produce of which was ex- 
tremely fluctuating, or in various funds, over rap- 
id transfers in which it was his amusement and 
his interest to have control, unchecked by refer- 
ence to trustees, that entails and settlements on 
children were an inconvenience he declined to 
incur. 

Besides, he held notions of his own as to the 
wisdom of keeping children dependent on their 
father. “What numbers of young men,” said 
he, “are ruined in character and in fortune by 
knowing that when their father dies they are cer- 
tain of the same provision, no matter how the}' 
displease him ; and in the mean while forestalling 
that provision by recourse to usurers!” These 
arguments might not have prevailed over the 
bride’s father a year or two later, Avhen, by the 
death of intervening kinsmen, he became Duke 
of Alton ; but in his then circumstances the mar- 
riage itself was so much beyond the expectations 
which the portionless daughter of a sea-captain 
has the right to form that Mr. Vane had it all 
his own way, and he remained absolute master 
of his whole fortune, save of that part of his land- 
ed estate on which his wife’s jointure was settled ; 
and even from this encumbrance he was very 
soon freed. His wife died in the second year of 
marriage, leaving an only son — Graham. He 
grieved for her loss with all the passion of an im- 
pressionable, ardent, and powerful nature. Then 
for a while he sought distraction to his sorrow by 
throwing himself into public life with a devoted 
energy he had not previously displayed. 


32 


THE PARISIANS. 


His speeches served to bring his party into 
power, and he yielded, though reluctantly, to the 
unanimous demand of that party that he should 
accept one of the highest offices in the new Cab- 
inet. He acquitted himself well as an adminis- 
trator, but declared, no doubt honestly, that he 
felt like Sindbad released from the old man on his 
back, when, a year or two afterward, he went 
out of office with his party. No persuasions 
could induce him to come in again ; nor did he 
ever again take a very active part in debate, 
“No, ’’said he, “I was born to the freedom of 
a private gentleman — intolerable to me is the 
thralldom of a public servant. But I will bring 
up my son so that he may acquit the debt which 
I decline to pay to my country.” There he kept 
his word. Graham had been carefully educated 
for public life, the ambition for it dinned into his 
ear from childhood. In his school vacations his 
father made him leani and declaim chosen speci- 
mens of masculine oratory ; engaged an eminent 
actor to give him lessons in elocution ; bade him 
frequent theatres, and study there the effect which 
words derive from looks and gesture ; encouraged 
him to take part himself in private theatricals. 
To all this the boy lent his mind with delight. 
He had the orator’s inbora temperament ; quick, 
yet imaginative, and loving the sport of rivalry 
and contest. Being also, in his boyish years, 
good-humored and joyous, he was not more a fa- 
vorite with the masters in the school-room than 
with boys in the play-ground. Leaving Eton at 
seventeen, he then entered at Cambridge, and be- 
came, in his first term, the most popular speaker 
at the Union. 

But his father cut short his academical career, 
and decided, for reasons of his own, to place him 
at once in Diplomacy. He was attached to the 
Embassy at Paris, and partook of the pleasures 
and dissipations of that metropolis too keenly to 
retain much of the sterner ambition to which he 
had before devoted himself. Becoming one of 
the spoiled darlings of fashion, there was great 
danger that his character would relax into the 
easy grace of the Epicurean, when all such loiter- 
ings in the Rose Garden were brought to abrupt 
close by a rude and terrible change in his for- 
tunes. 

His father was killed by a fall from his horse 
in hunting ; and when his affairs were investi- 
gated, they were found to be hopelessly involved 
— apparently the assets would not suffice for the 
debts. The elder Vane himself was probably not 
aware of the extent of his liabilities. He had 
never wanted ready money to the last. He could 
always obtain that from a money-lender, or from 
the sale of his funded investments. But it be- 
came obvious, on examining his papers, that he 
knew at least how impaired would be the herit- 
age he should bequeath to a son whom he idol- 
ized. For that reason he had given Graham a 
profession in diplomacy, and for that reason he 
had privately applied to the Ministry for the 
Viceroyalty of India, in the event of its speedy 
vacancy. He was eminent enough not to antici- 
pate refusal, and with economy in that lucrative 
post much of his pecuniary difficulties might have 
been redeemed, and at least an independent pro- 
vision secured for his son. 

Graham, like Alain de Rochebriant, allowed 
no reproach on his father’s memory — indeed, with 
more reason than Alain, for the elder Vane’s for- 


tune had at least gone on no mean and frivolous 
dissipation. 

It had lavished itself on encouragement to art 
— on great objects of public beneficence — on pub- 
lic-spirited aid of political objects ; and even in 
mere selfish enjoyments there was a certain 
grandeur in his princely hospitalities, in his mu- 
nificent generosity, in a warm-hearted careless- 
ness for money. No indulgence in petty follies 
or degrading vices aggravated the offense of the 
magnificent squanderer. 

“ Let me look on my loss of fortune as a gain 
to myself,” said Graham, manfully. “Had I 
been a rich man, my experience of Paris tells me 
that I should most likely have been a very idle 
one. Now that I have no gold, I must dig in 
myself for iron.” 

The man to whom he said this was an uncle- 
in-law — if I may use that phrase — the Right 
Honorable Richard King, popularly styled “the 
blameless King.” 

This gentleman had mamed the sister of Gra- 
ham’s mother, whose loss in his infancy and boy- 
hood she had tenderly and anxiously sought to 
supply. It is impossible to conceive a woman 
more fitted to invite love and reverence than was 
Lady Janet King, her manners were so sweet and 
gentle, her whole nature so elevated and pure. 

Her father had succeeded to the dukedom when 
she married Mr, King, and the alliance was not 
deemed quite suitable. Still it was not one to 
which the Duke would have been fairly justified 
in refusing his assent. 

Mr. King could not, indeed, boast of noble an- 
cestry, nor was he even a landed proprietor ; but 
he was a not undistinguished member of Parlia- 
ment, of irreproachable character, and ample for- 
tune inherited from a distant kinsman, who had 
enriched himself as a merchant. It was on both 
sides a marriage of love. 

It is popularly said that a man uplifts a wife 
to his own rank; it as often happens that a wom- 
an uplifts her husband to the dignity of.her own 
character. Richard King rose greatly in public 
estimation after his marriage with Lady Janet. 

She united to a sincere piety a very active and 
a very enlightened benevolence. She guided his 
ambition aside from mere party politics into sub- 
jects of social and religious interest, and in de- 
voting himself to these he achieved a position 
more popular and more respected than he could 
ever have won in the strife of party. 

When the government of which the elder Vane 
became a leading minister was formed, it was 
considered a great object to secure a name so 
high in the religious world, so beloved by the 
working classes, as that of Richard King ; and 
he accepted one of those places which, though 
not in the Cabinet, confer the rank of privy 
councilor. 

When that brief-lived administration ceased, 
he felt the same sensation of relief that Vane had 
felt, and came to the same resolution never again 
to accept office, but from different reasons, all of 
which need not now be detailed. Among them, 
however, certainly this : He was exceedingly sen- 
sitive to opinion, thin-skinned as to abuse, and 
very tenacious of the respect due to his peculiar 
character of sanctity and philanthropy. He 
writhed under every newspaper article that had 
made “the blameless King” responsible for the 
iniquities of the government to which he belonged. 


THE PARISIANS. 


33 


In the loss of office he seemed to recover his for- 
mer throne. 

Mr. King heard Graham’s resolution with a 
grave approving smile, and his interest in the 
young man became greatly increased. He de- 
voted himself strenuously to the object of saving 
to Graham some wrecks of his paternal fortunes, 
and having a clear head and great experience in 
the transaction of business, he succeeded beyond 
the most sanguine expectations formed by the 
family solicitor. A rich manufacturer was found 
to purchase at a fancy price the bulk of the es- 
tate with the palatial mansion, which the estate 
alone could never have sufficed to maintain with 
suitable establishments. 

So that when all debts were paid, Graham 
found himself in possession of a clear income of 
about £500 a year, invested in a mortgage se- 
• cured on a part of the hereditary lands, on which 
was seated an old hunting-lodge bought by a 
brewer. 

With this portion of the property Graham part- 
ed very reluctantly. It was situated amidst the 
most picturesque scenery on the estate, and the 
lodge itself was a remnant of the original resi- 
dence of his ancestors before it had been aban- 
doned for that which, built in the reign of Eliza- 
beth, had been expanded into a Trentham-like 
palace by the last owner. 

But Mr. King’s argument reconciled him to the 
sacrifice. “ I can manage,” said the prudent ad- 
viser, “ if you insist on it, to retain that remnant 
of the hereditary estate which jmu are so loath to 
part with. But how ? by mortgaging it to an ex- 
tent that will scarcely leave you £50 a year net 
from the rents. This is not all. Your mind will 
then be distracted from the large object of a ca- 
reer to the small object of retaining a few family 
acres ; you will be constantly hampered by pri- 
vate anxieties and fears : you could do nothing 
for the benefit of those around you — could not 
repair a farm-house for a better class of tenant — 
could not rebuild a laborer’s dilapidated cottage. 
Give up an idea that might be very w'ell for a man 
whose sole ambition was to remain a squire, how- 
ever beggarly. Launch yourself into the larger 
world of metropolitan life with energies wholly 
unshackled, a mind wholly undisturbed, and se- 
cure of an income which, however modest, is 
equal to that of most young men who enter that 
world as your equals.” 

Graham was convinced, and yielded, though 
with a bitter pang. It is hard for a man whose 
fathers have lived on the soil to give up all trace 
of their whereabouts. But none saw in him any 
morbid consciousness of change of fortune, when, 
a year after his father’s death, he reassumed his 
place in society. If before courted for his expec- 
tations, he was still courted for himself ; by many 
of the great who had loved his father, perhaps 
even courted more. 

He resigned the diplomatic career, not merely 
because the rise in that profession is slow, and in 
the intermediate steps the chances of distinction 
are slight and few, but more because he desired 
to cast his lot in the home country, and regarded 
the courts of other lands as exile. 

It was not true, however, as Lemercier had 
stated on report, that he lived on his pen. Curb- 
ing all his old extravagant tastes, £500 a year 
amply supplied his wants. But he had by his 
pen gained distinction, and created great belief 


in his abilities for a public career. He had writ- 
ten critical articles, read with much praise, in pe- 
riodicals of authority, and had published one or 
two essays on political questions, which had cre- 
ated yet more sensation. It was only the graver 
literature, connected more or less with his ulti- 
mate object of a public career, in which he had 
thus evinced his talents of composition. Such 
writings were not of a nature to bring him much 
money, but they gave him a definite and solid 
station. In the old time, before the first Reform 
Bill, his reputation would have secured him at 
once a seat in Parliament ; but the ancient nur- 
series of statesmen are gone, and their place is 
not supplied. 

He had been invited, however, to stand for 
more than one large and populous borough, with 
very fair prospects of success ; and whatever the 
expense, Mr. King had offered to defray it. But 
Graham would not have incurred the latter obli- 
gation ; and when he learned the pledges which 
his supporters would have exacted, he would not 
have stood if success had been certain and the 
cost nothing. “I can not,” he said to his 
friends, “go into the consideration of what is 
best for the country with my thoughts manacled ; 
and I can not be both representative and slave of 
the greatest ignorance of the greatest number. I 
bide my time, and meanwhile I prefer to Avrite as 
I please, rather than vote as I don’t please.” 

Three years went by, passed chiefly in En- 
gland, partly in travel ; and at the age of thirty 
Graham Vane was still one of those of whom ad- 
mirers say, “ He Avill be a great man some day 
and detractors reply, “ Some day seems a long 
way off.” 

The same fastidiousness which had operated 
against that entrance into Parliament to Avhich 
his ambition not the less steadily adapted itself, 
had kept him free from the perils of wedlock. 
In his heart he yearned for love and domestic 
life, but he had hitherto met with no one who re- 
alized the ideal he had formed. With his per- 
son, his accomplishments, his connections, and 
his repute, he might have made many an advan- 
tageous marriage. But somehow or other the 
charm vanished from a fair face if the shadow 
of a money-bag fell on it ; on the other hand, 
his ambition occupied so large a share in his 
thoughts that he would have fled in time from 
the temptation of a marriage that would have 
overweighted him beyond the chance of rising. 
Added to all, he desired in a wife an intellect 
that, if not equal to his own, could become so by 
sympathy — a union of high culture and noble 
aspiration, and yet of loving womanly sweetness 
which a man seldom finds out of books ; and 
when he does find it, perhaps it does not Avear 
the sort of face that he fancies. Be that as it 
may, Graham was still unmarried and heart- 
whole. 

And noAv a new change in his life befell him. 
Lady Janet died of a fe\’er contracted in her ha- 
bitual rounds of charity among the houses of the 
poor. She had been to him as the most tender 
mother, and a lovelier soul than hers never alight- 
ed on the earth. His grief was intense ; but 
what was her husband’s? — one of those griefs 
that kill. 

To the side of Richard King his Janet had 
been as the guardian angel. His love for her 
was almost Avorship — Avith her, eA'ery object in a 


34 


THE PARISIANS. 


life hitherto so active and useful seemed gone. 
He evinced no noisy passion of sorrow. He shut 
himself up, and refused to see even Graham. But 
after some weeks had passed, he admitted the 
clergyman in whom, on spiritual matters, he ha- 
bitually confided, and seemed consoled by the vis- 
its ; then he sent for his lawyer, and made his 
will ; after which he allowed Graham to call on 
him daily, on the condition that there should be 
no reference to his loss. He spoke to the young 
man on other subjects, rather drawing him out 
about himself, sounding his opinion on various 
grave matters, watching his face while he ques- 
tioned, as if seeking to dive into his heart, and 
sometimes pathetically sinking into silence, bro- 
ken but by sighs. 8o it went on for a few more 
weeks ; then he took the advice of his physician 
to seek change of air and scene. He went away 
alone, without even a servant, not leaving word 
where he had gone. After a little while he re- 
turned, more ailing, more broken than before. 
One morning he was found insensible — stricken 
by paralysis. He regained consciousness, and 
even for some days rallied strength. He might 
have recovered, but he seemed as if he tacitly re- 
fused to live. He expired at last, peacefully, in 
Graham’s arms. 

At the opening of his will, it was found that 
he had left Graham his sole heir and executor. 
Deducting government duties, legacies to serv- 
ants, and donations to public charities, the sum 
thus bequeathed to his lost w’ife’s nephew was 
two hundred and twenty thousand pounds. 

With such a fortune, opening indeed was made 
for an ambition so long obstructed. But Gra- 
ham affected no change in his mode of life ; he 
still retained his modest bachelor’s apartments — 
engaged no seiwants — bought no horses — in no 
way exceeded the income he had possessed be- 
fore. He seemed, indeed, depressed rather than 
elated by the succession to a wealth which he had 
never anticipated. 

Two children had been born from the marriage 
of Richard King ; they had died young, it is true, 
but Lady Janet at the time of her own decease 
w'as not too advanced in years for the reasonable 
expectation of other offspring ; and even after 
Richard King became a widower, he had given 
to Graham no hint of his testamentary disposi- 
tions. The young man was no blood-relation to 
him, and naturally supposed that such relations 
would become the heirs. But in truth the de- 
ceased seemed to have no near relations — none 
had ever been known to visit him — none raised 
a voice to question the justice of his will. 

Lady Janet had been buried at Kensal Green ; 
her husband’s remains w'ere placed in the same 
vault. 

For days and days Graham went his way lone- 
lily to the cemetery. He might be seen standing 
motionless by that tomb, with tears rolling down 
his cheeks ; yet his was not a w'eak nature — not 
one of those that love indulgence of irremedia- 
ble grief. On the contrary, people who did not 
know him well said “ that he had more head than 
heart,” and the character of his pursuits, as of his 
writings, was certainly not that of a sentimental- 
ist. He had not thus visited the tomb till Rich- 
ard King had been placed within it. Yet his love 
for his aunt was unspeakably greater than that 
w hich he could have felt for her husband. Was 
it, then, the husband that he so much more acute- 


ly mourned ; or w'as there something that, since 
the husband’s death, had deepened his reverence 
for the memory of her whom he not only loved 
as a mother, but honored as a saint ? 

These visits to the cemetery did not cease till 
Graham w'as confined to his bed by a very grave 
illness — the only one he had ever known. His 
physician said it w^as neiwous fever, and occa- 
sioned by moral shock or excitement ; it was at- 
tended with delirium. His recoveiy was slow, 
and when it was sufficiently completed he quitted 
England ; and we find him now, with his mind 
composed, his strength restored, and his spirits 
braced, in that gay city of Paris, hiding, perhaps, 
some earnest puiq)ose amidst his participation in 
its holiday enjoyments. 

He is now, as I have said, seated before his 
writing-table in deep thought. He takes up a 
letter which he had already glanced over hastily, 
and reperuses it with more care. 

The letter is from his cousin, the Duke of Al- 
ton, who had succeeded a few years since to the 
family honors — an able man, with no small de- 
gree of information, an ardent politician, but of 
very rational and temperate opinions ; too much 
occupied by the cares of a princely estate to cov- 
et office for himself ; too sincere a patriot not to 
desire office for those to whose hands he thought 
the country might be most safely intrusted — an 
intimate friend of Graham’s. The contents of 
the letter are these : 

‘ ‘ My dear Graham, — I trust that you will wel- 
come the brilliant opening into public life which 
these lines are intended to announce to you. 
Vavasour has just been with me to say that he 
intends to resign his seat for the county w'hen 
Parliament meets, and agreeing wdth me that 
there is no one so fit to succeed him as yourself, 
he suggests the keeping his intention secret until 
you have arranged your committee and are pre- 
pared to take the field. You can not hope to es- 
cape a contest ; but I have examined the Regis- 
ter, and the party has gained rather than lost 
since the last election, when Vavasour was so tri- 
umphantly retunied. 

“The expenses for this county, where there 
are so many out-voters to bring up, and so many 
agents to retain, are always large in comparison 
wdth some other counties ; but that consideration 
is all in your favor, for it deters Squire Hunston, 
the only man who could beat you, from starting ; 
and to your resources a thousand pounds more 
or less are a trifle not w'orth discussing. You 
know how difficult it is nowadays to find a seat 
for a man of moderate opinions like yours and 
mine. Our county would exactly suit you. The 
constituency is so evenly divided between the ur- 
ban and rural populations, that its representative 
must fairly consult the interests of both. He can 
be neither an ultra-Toiy nor a violent Radical. 

He is left to the enviable freedom, to which you 
say you aspire, of considering what is best for i 
the country as a whole. ' 

“Do not lose so rare an opportunity. There 
is but one drawback to your triumphant Candida- . 
ture. It will be said that you have no longer an 
acre in the county in which the Vanes have been | 
settled so long. That drawback can be removed, i 
It is true that you can never hope to buy back i 
the estates which you were compelled to sell at 
your father’s death — the old manufacturer gripes 


THE PARISIANS. 


35 


them too firmly to loosen his hold ; and after all, 
even were your income double what it is, you 
would be overhoused in the vast pile in which 
your father buried so large a share of his fortune. 
But that beautiful old hunting-lodge, the Stamm 
Schloss of your family, with the adjacent farms, 
can be now repurchased veiy reasonably. The 
brew’er who bought them is afflicted with an ex- 
travagant son, whom he placed in the IIus- 

sai-s, and will gladly sell the property for £5000 
more than he gave : w'ell worth the dilFerente, 
as he has improved the farm-buildings and raised 
the rental. I think, in addition to the sum you 
have on mortgage, £23,000 will be accepted, and 
as a mere investment pay you nearly three per 
cent. But to you it is worth more than double 
the money ; it once more identifies your ancient 
name with the county. You would be a greater 
personage with that moderate holding in the dis- 
trict in which your race took root, and on which 
your father’s genius threw such a lustre, than 
you would be if you invested all your wealth in a 
county in which every squire and farmer would 
call you ‘the new man.’ Pray think over this 
most seriously, and instruct your solicitor to open 
negotiations with the brewer at once. But rath- 
er put yourself into the train, and come back to 
England straight to me. I will ask Vavasour to 
meet you. What news from Paris ? Is the Em- 
peror as ill as the papers insinuate ? And is the 
revolutionary party gaining ground ? Your af- 
fectionate cousin, Alton.” 

As he put down this letter, Graham heaved a 
short impatient sigh. 

“ The old Stamm Schloss," he muttered — “ a 
foot on the old soil once more ! and an entrance 
into the great arena with hands unfettered. Is 
it possible ! — is it — is it ?” 

At this moment the door-bell of the apartment 
rang, and a servant whom Graham had hired at 
Paris as a laquais de place announced “ Ce Mon- 
sieur. ” 

Graham hun-ied the letter into his portfolio, 
and said, “You mean the person to w'hom I am 
ahvays at home ?” 

“ The same, monsieur.” 

“ Admit him, of course.” 

There entered a wonderfully thin man, middle- 
aged, clothed in black, his face cleanly shaven, 
his hair cut very short, with one of those faces 
which, to use a French expression, say “ noth- 
ing.” It was absolutel}'^ without expression — it 
had not even, despite its thinness, one salient feat- 
ure. If you had found yourself anj' where seat- 
ed next to that man, your eye would have passed 
him over as too insignificant to notice ; if at a 
cafe, you would have gone on talking to your 
friend without lowering your voice. What mat- 
tered it whether a bete like that overheard or 
not ? Had you been asked to guess his calling 
and station, you might have said, minutely ob- 
serving the freshness of his clothes and the un- 
deniable respectability of his tout ensemble, “He 
must be well off, and with no care for customers 
on his mind — a ci-devant chandler who has retired 
on a legacy. ” 

Graham rose at the entrance of his visitor, 
motioned him courteously to a seat beside him, 
and waiting till the laquais had vanished, then 
asked, “ What news ?” 

“ None, I fear, that will satisfy monsieur. I 


have certainly hunted out, since I had last the 
honor to see you, no less than four ladies of the 
name of Duval, but only one of them took that 
name from her parents, and was also christened 
Louise.” 

‘ ‘ Ah — Louise. ” 

“ Yes, the daughter of a perfumer, aged twenty- 
eight. She, therefore, is not the Louise you seek. 
Permit me to refer to your instructions.” Here 
M. Renard took out a note-book, turned over the 
leaves, and resumed — “Wanted, Louise Duval, 
daughter of Auguste Duval, a French drawing- 
master, w'lio lived for many years at Tours, re- 
moved to Paris in 1845, lived at No. 12 Rue de 

S at Paris for some years, but afterward 

moved to a different quartier of the town, and 

died, 1848, in Rue L , No. 39. Shortly after 

his death, his daughter Louise left that lodging, 
and could not be traced. In 1849 official docu- 
ments reporting her death were forwarded from 
Munich to a person (a friend of yours, monsieur). 
Death, of course, taken for granted ; but nearly 
five years afterward, this very person encounter- 
ed the said Louise Duval at Aix-la-Chapelle, and 
never heard nor saw more of her. Demande 
submitted, to find out said Louise Duval or any 
children of hers born in 1848-9 ; supposed in 
1852-3 to have one child, a girl, between four 
and five years old. Is that right, monsieur ?” 

‘ ‘ Quite right. ” 

“And this is the whole information given to 
me. Monsieur, on giving it, asked me if I 
thought it desirable that he should commence in- 
quiries at Aix-la-Chapelle, where Louise Duval 
was last seen by the person interested to discover 
her. I reply. No ; — pains thrown away. Aix- 
la-Chapelle is not a place where any French- 
woman not settled there by marriage would re- 
main. Nor does it seem probable that the said 
Duval would venture to select for her residence 
Munich, a city in which she had contrived to 
obtain certificates of her death. A Frenchwom- 
an who has once known Paris always wants to 
get back to it ; especially, monsieur, if she has 
the beauty which you assign to this lady. I there- 
fore suggested that our inquiries should commence 
in this capital. Monsieur agreed with me, and I 
did not grudge the time necessary for investiga- 
tion.” 

“You were most obliging. Still I am be- 
ginning to be impatient if time is to be thrown 
away.” 

‘ ‘ Naturally. Permit me to return to my notes. 
Monsieur informs me that tw'enty-one years ago, 
in 1848, the Parisian police were instructed to 
find out this lady and failed, but gave hopes of 
discovering her through her relations. He asks 
me to refer to our archives ; I tell him that is no 
use. However, in order to oblige him, I do so. 
No trace of such inquiry — it must have been, as 
monsieur led me to suppose, a strictly private 
one, unconnected with crime or with politics ; 
and as I have the honor to tell monsieur, no rec- 
ord of such investigations is preserved in the 
Rue Jerusalem. Great scandal would there be, 
and injury to the peace of families, if we pre- 
served the results of private inquiries intrusted to 
us — by absurdly jealous husbands, for instance. 
Honor, monsieur, honor forbids it. Next, I sug- 
gest to monsieur that his simplest plan would be 
an advertisement in the French journals, stating, 
if I understand him right, that it is for the pe- 


THE PARISIANS. 


3G 

cuniary interest of Madame or Mademoiselle Du- 
val, daughter of Auguste Duval, artiste en dessin, 
to come forward. Monsieur objects to that.” 

“ I object to it extremely ; as I have told you, 
this is a strictly confidential inquiiy, and an ad- 
vertisement, which in all likelihood would be 
practically useless (it proved to be so in a former 
inquiry), would not be resorted to unless all else 
failed, and even then with reluctance.” 

“Quite so. Accordingly, monsieur delegates 
to me, who have been recommended to him as 
the best person he can employ in that department 
of our police which is not connected with crime 
or political surveillance, a task the most difficult. 

I have, through strictly private investigations, to 
discover the address and prove the identity of a 
lady bearing a name among the most common in 
France, and of whom nothing has been heard for 
fifteen years, and then at so migratory an endroit 
as Aix-la-Chapelle. You will not or can not in- 
form me if since that time the lady has changed 
her name by marriage.” 

“ I have no reason to think that she has ; and 
there are reasons against the supposition that she 
married after 1849.” 

“ Permit me to observe that the more details 
of information monsieur can give me, the easier 
my task of research will be.” 

“I have given you all the details I can, and, 
aware of the difficulty of tracing a person with a 
name so much the reverse of singular, I adopted 
your advice in our first inteiwiew, of asking some 
Parisian friend of mine, with a large acquaint- 
ance in the miscellaneous societies of your capital, 
to inform me of any ladies of that name whom 
he might chance to encounter ; and he, like you, 
has lighted upon one or two, who, alas ! resemble 
the right one in name, and nothing more.” 

“ You will do wisely to keep him on the watch 
as well as myself. If it were but a murderess or 
a political incendiary, then you might trust ex- 
clusively to the enlightenment of our corys, but 
this seems an affair of sentiment, monsieur. Sen- 
timent is not in our way. Seek the trace of that 
in the haunts of pleasure.” 

M. Renard, having thus poetically delivered 
himself of that philosophical dogma, rose to de- 
part. 

Graham slipped into his hand a bank-note of 
sufficient value to justify the profound bow he 
received in return. 

When M. Renard had gone, Graham heaved 
another impatient sigh, and said to himself, “No, 
it is not possible — at least not yet.” 

Then, compressing his lips as a man who 
forces himself to something he dislikes, he dipped 
his pen into the inkstand, and wrote rapidly thus 
to his kinsman : 

“ My dear Cousin, — I lose not a post in re- 
plying to your kind and considerate letter. It 
is not in my power at present to return to En- 
gland. I need not say how fondly I cherish the 
hope of representing the dear old county some 
day. If Vavasour could be induced to defer his 
resignation of the seat for another session, or at 
least for six or seven months, why then I might 
be free to avail myself of the opening; at pres- 
ent I am not. Meanwhile I am sorely tempted 
to buy back the old Lodge — probably the brewer 
would allow me to leave on mortgage the sum I 
myself have on the property and a few additional : 


thousands. I have reasons for not wishing to 
transfer at present much of the money now in- 
vested in the funds. I will consider tliis point, 
which probably does not press. 

“I reserve all Paris news till my next; and 
begging you to forgive so curt and unsatisfactory 
a reply to a letter so important that it excites me 
more than I like to own, believe me, your affec- 
tionate friend and cousin, Graham.” 


CHAPTER II. 

At about the same hour on the same day in 
which the Englishman held the conference with 
the Parisian detective just related, the Marquis 
de Rochebriant found himself by appointment in 
the cabinet d’affaires of his avoue M. Gandrin : 
that gentleman had hitherto not found time to 
give him a definitive opinion as to the case sub- 
mitted to his judgment. The avoue received 
Alain with a kind of forced civility, in which the 
natural intelligence of the Marquis, despite his 
inexperience of life, discovered embarrassment. 

’■‘■Monsieur le Marquis,” said Gandrin, fidget- 
ing among the papers on his bureau, “ this is 
a very complicated business. I have given not 
only my best attention to it, but to your general 
interests. To be plain, your estate, though a 
fine one, is fearfully encumbered — fearfully — 
frightfully.” 

“ Sir,” said the Marquis, haughtily, “ that is a 
fact which was never disguised from you.” 

“ I do not say that it was. Marquis ; but I 
scarcely realized the amount of the liabilities nor 
the nature of the property. It will be difficult — 
nay, I fear, impossible — to find any capitalist to 
advance a sum that will cover the mortgages at 
an interest less than you now pay. As for a 
company to take the whole trouble off your 
hands, clear off the mortgages, manage the for- 
ests, develop the fisheries, guarantee you an ade- 
quate income, and at the end of twenty-one years 
or so render up to you or your heirs the free en- 
joyment of an estate thus improved, we must 
dismiss that prospect as a wild dream of my good 
friend M. Hebert’s. People in the provinces do 
dream ; in Paris every body is wide awake.” 

“ Monsieur,” said the Marquis, with that in- 
boni imperturbable loftiness of sang-froid which 
has always in adverse circumstances character- 
ized the French noblesse, “be kind enough to re- 
store my papei’s. I see that you are not the man 
for me. Allow me only to thank you, and in- 
quire the amount of my debt for the trouble I 
have given.” 

“Perhaps you are quite justified in thinking 
I am not the man for you. Monsieur le Marquis; 
and your papers shall, if you decide on dismiss- 
ing me, be returned to you this evening. But 
as to my accepting remunei’ation where I have 
rendered no service, I request M. le Marquis to 
put that out of the question. Considering my- 
self, then, no longer your avoue, do not think I 
take too great a liberty in volunteering my coun- 
sel as a friend — or a friend at least to M. Hebert, 
if you do not vouchsafe my right so to address 
yourself.” 

M. Gandrin spoke with a certain dignity of 
voice and manner which touched and softened 
: his listener. 


THE PARISIANS. 


37 


“You make me your debtor far more than I 
pretend to repay,” replied Alain. “Heaven 
knows I want a friend, and I will heed with 
gratitude and respect all your counsels in that 
character.” 

“Plainly and briefly, my advice is this : Mon- 
sieur Louvier is the principal mortgagee. He is 
among the six richest negotiators of Paris. He 
does not, therefore, want money, hut, like most 
self-made men, he is very accessible to social 
vanities. He would be proud to think he had 
l endered a service to a Rochebriant. Approach 
him either through me, or, far better, at once in- 
troduce yourself, and propose to consolidate all 
your other liabilities in one mortgage to him, at 
a rate of interest lower than that which is now 
paid to some of the small mortgagees. This 
would add considerably to your income, and 
would carry out M. He'bert’s advice.” 

“ But does it not strike you, dear M. Gandrin, 
that such going cap in hand to one who has pow- 
er over my fate, while I have none over his, would 
scarcely be consistent with my self-respect, not 
as Rochebriant only, but as Frenchman ?” 

“ It does not strike me so in the least ; at all 
events, I could make the proposal on your behalf 
without compromising yourself, though I should 
be far more sanguine of success if you addressed 
M. Louvier in person.” 

“I should nevertheless prefer leaving it in 
your hands ; but even for that I must take a 
few days to consider. Of all the mortgagees, M. 
Louvier has been hitherto the severest and most 
menacing, the one whom Hebert dreads the most ; 
and should he become sole mortgagee, my whole 
estate would pass to him if, through any succes- 
sion of bad seasons and failing tenants, the inter- 
est was not punctually paid.” 

“ It could so pass to him now.” 

“No ; for there have been years in which the 
other mortgagees^, who are Bretons, and would 
be loath to ruin a Rochebriant, have been lenient 
and patient.” 

“ If Louvier has not been equally so, it is only 
because he knew nothing of you, and your father 
no doubt had often sorely tasked his endurance. 
Come, suppose we manage to break the ice easi- 
ly. Do me the honor to dine here to meet him ; 
you will find that he is not an unpleasant man.” 

The Marquis hesitated, but the thought of the 
sharp and seemingly hopeless struggle for the re- 
tention of his ancestral home to which he would 
be doomed if he returned from Paris unsuccess- 
ful in his errand overmastered his pride. He 
felt as if that self-conquest was a duty he owed 
to the very tombs of his fathers. “ I ought not 
to shrink from the face of a creditor,” said he, 
smiling somewhat sadly, “and I accept the pro- 
posal you so graciously make.” 

“You do well. Marquis, and I will write at 
once to Louvier to ask him to give me his first 
disengaged day.” 

The Marquis had no sooner quitted the house 
than M. Gandrin opened a door at the side of 
his office, and a large portly man strode into the 
room — stride it was rather than step — firm, self- 
assured, arrogant, masterful. 

“Well, nion amf,” said this man, taking his 
stand at the hearth, as a king might take his 
stand in the hall of his vassal — “and what says 
our petit muscadin ?” 

“ He is neither jueriV nor muscadin^ Monsieur 


Louvier,” replied Gandrin, peevishly; “and he 
will task your powers to get him thoroughly into 
your net. But I have persuaded him to meet 
you here. What day can you dine with me ? I 
had better ask no one else.” 

“ To-morrow I dine with my friend O , to 

meet the chiefs of the Opposition,” said M. Lou- 
vier, with a sort of careless rollicking pomposity. 
“Thursday with Periera — Saturday I entertain 
at home. Say Friday. Your hour ?” 

“ Seven.” 

“ Good ! Show me those Rochebriant papers 
again ; there is something I had forgotten to 
note. Never mind me. Go on with your work 
as if I were not here.” 

Louvier took up the papers, seated himself in 
an arm-chair by the fire-place, stretched out his 
legs, and read at his ease, but with a very rapid 
eye, as a practiced lawyer skims through the 
technical forms of a case to fasten upon the mar- 
row of it. 

“Ah! as I thought. The farms could not pay 
even the interest on my present mortgage ; the 
forests come in for that. If a contractor for the 
yearly sale of the woods was bankrupt and did 
not pay, how could I get my interest ? Answer 
me that, Gandrin.” 

“Certainly you must run the risk of that 
chance.” 

“Of course the chance occurs, and then I fore- 
close* — I seize — Rochebriant and its seigneuries 
are mine.” 

As he spoke he laughed, not sardonically — a 
jovial laugh — and opened wide, to reshut as in a 
vise, the strong iron hand which had doubtless 
closed over many a man’s all. 

“Thanks. On Friday, seven o’clock.” He 
tossed the papers back on the bureau, nodded a 
royal nod, and strode forth imperiously as he had 
strided in. 


CHAPTER HI. 

Meanwhile the young Marquis pursued his 
way thoughtfully through the streets, and enter- 
ed the Champs Elysees. Since we first, nay, 
since we last saw him, he is strikingly improved 
in outward appearances. He has unconsciously 
acquired more of the easy grace of the Parisian 
in gait and bearing. You would no longer de- 
tect the provincial — perhaps, however, because 
he is now dressed, though very simply, in habili- 
ments that belong to the style of the day. Rare- 
ly among the loungers in the Champs Elysees 
could be seen a finer form, a comelier face, an air 
of more unmistakable distinction. 

The eyes of many a passing fair one gazed on 
him, admiringly or coquettishly. But he was 
still so little the true Parisian that they got no 
smile, no look in return. He was wrapped in his 
own thoughts; was he thinking of M. Louvier? 

He had nearly gained the entrance of the Bois 
de Boulogne, when he was accosted by a voice 
behind, and, tuniing round, saw his friend Le- 
mercier arm in arm with Graham Vane. 

Bon-j our ^ Alain,” said Lemercier, hooking 
his disengaged arm into Rochebriant’s. “I sus- 
pect we are going the same way.” 

* For the sake of the general reader, English technic- 
al words are here, as elsewhere, substituted as much 
as possible for French. 


38 


THE PARISIANS. 


Alain felt himself change countenance at this 
conjecture, and replied, coldly, “ I think not ; 1 
have got to the end of my walk, and shall turn 
back to Paris;” addressing himself to the En- 
glishman, he said, with formal politeness, “ I re- 
gret not to have found you at home when I call- 
ed some weeks ago, and no less so to have been 
out when you had the complaisance to return my 
visit.” 

“At all eA'ents,” replied the Englishman, “ let 
me not lose the opportunity of improving our ac- 
quaintance Avhich now offers. It is true that our 
friend Lemercier, catching sight of me in the 
Rue de Rivoli, stopped his coupe and carried me 
off for a promenade in the Bois. The fineness 
of the day tempted us to get out of his carriage 
as the Bois came in sight. But if you are going 
back to Paris, I relinquish the Bois, and offer my- 
self as your companion.” 

Frederic (the name is so familiarly English 
that the reader might think me pedantic did I 
accentuate it as French) looked from one to the 
other of his two friends, half amused and half 
angry. 

“And am I to be left alone to achieve a con- 
quest, in which, if I succeed, I shall change into 
hate and en^y the affection of my two best 
friends ? — Be it so. 

‘“Un veritable amant ne connait point d’amis.’” 

“I do not comprehend your meaning,” said 
the Marquis, Avith a compressed lip and a slight 
froAvn. 

‘ ‘ Bah ! ” cried Frederic ; ‘ ‘ come, franc jeu — 
cards on the table — M. Grarm-Vara was going 
into the Bois at my suggestion on the chance of 
having another look at the pearl-colored angel ; 
and you, Rochebriant, can’t deny that you were 
going into the Bois for the same object.” 

“One may pardon an enfant ?em’6/e, ” said 
the Englishman, laughing, “but an ami terrible 
should be sent to the galleys. Come, Marquis, let 
us Avalk back and submit to our fate. EA'en Avere 
the lady once more visible, Ave have no chance 
of being observed by the side of a Lovelace so 
accomplished and so audacious I” ' 

“Adieu, then, recreants — I go alone. Victo- 
ry or death.” 

The Parisian beckoned his coachman, entered 
his carriage, and, with a mocking grimace, kissed 
his hand to the companions thus deserting or de- 
serted. 

Rochebriant touched the Englishman’s arm, 
and said, “Do you think that Lemercier could 
be impertinent enough to accost that lady ?” 

“ In the first place,” returned the Englishman, 
“Lemercier himself tells me that the lady has 
for several weeks relinquished her Avalks in the 
Bois, and the probability is, therefore, that he 
Avill not haA’e the opportunity to accost her. In 
the next place, it appears that when she did take 
her solitary walk she did not stray far from her 
carriage, and was in reach of the protection of 
her laquais and coachman. But to speak hon- 
estly, do you, w’ho know Lemercier better than I, 
take him to be a man who would commit an im- 
pertinence to a woman unless there were viveurs 
of his own sex to see him do it.” 

Alain smiled. “No. Frederic’s real nature 
is an admirable one, and if he ever do any thing 
that he ought to be ashamed of, ’twill be from 
the pride of shoAving how finely he can do it. 


Such Avas his character at college, and such it 
still seems at Paris. But it is true that the lady 
has forsaken her former walk ; at least I — I have 
not seen her since the day I first beheld her in 
company Avith Frederic. Yet — yet, pardon me, 
you AA'ere going to the Bois on the chance of see- 
ing her. Perhaps she has changed the direction 
of her walk, and — and — ” 

The Marquis stopped short, stammering and 
confused. 

The Englishman scanned his countenance with 
the rapid glance of a practiced observer of men 
and things, and after a short pause said : “If the 
lady has selected some other spot for her prome- 
nade, I am ignorant of it ; nor have I eA'en vol- 
unteered the chance of meeting with her since I 
learned — first from Lemercier, and afterward 
from others — that her destination is the stage. 
Let us talk frankly. Marquis. I am accustomed 
to take much exercise on foot, and the Bois is 
my favorite resort ; one day I there found my- 
self in the alike which the lady we speak of used 
to select for her promenade, and there saw her. 
Something in her face impressed me ; how shall 
I describe the impression ? Did you ever open 
a poem, a romance, in some style wholly ncAv to 
you, and before you Avere quite certain whether 
or not its merits justified the interest which the 
novelty inspired, you were summoned away, or 
the book was taken out of your hands? If so, 
did you not feel an intellectual longing to have 
another glimpse of the book ? That illustration 
describes my impression, and I own that I twice 
again Avent to the same alike. The last time I 
only caught sight of the young lady as she Avas 
getting into her carriage. As she Avas then 
borne away, I perceived one of the custodians of 
the Bois ; and learned, on questioning him, that 
the lady Avas in the habit of Avalking always alone 
in the same alike at the same hour on most fine 
days, but that he did not know her name or ad- 
dress. A motive of curiosity — perhaps an idle 
one — then made me ask Lemercier, Avho boasts 
of knoAving his Paris so intimately, if he could 
inform me Avho the lady was. He undertook ta 
ascertain.” 

“But,” interposed the Marquis, “he did not 
ascertain Avho she Avas ; he only ascertained, 
where she lived, and that she and an elder com- 
panion Avere Italians, Avhom he suspected, with- 
out sufficient ground, to be professional singers.” 

“True; but since then I ascertained more 
detailed particulars from tAvo acquaintances of 
mine Avho happen to knoAv her — M. Savarin, the 
distinguished writer, and Mrs. Morley, an ac- 
complished and beautiful American lady, Avho is 
more than an acquaintance. I may boast the 
honor of ranking among her friends. As SaA'a- 

rin’s villa is at A , I asked him incidentally 

if he knew the fair neighbor whose face had so 
attracted me ; and Mrs. Morley being present, 
and overhearing me, I learned from both Avhat I 
now repeat to you. 

“The young lady is a Signorina Cicogna — 
at Paris exchanging (except among particular 
friends), as is not unusual, the outlandish desig- 
nation of signorina for the more conventional 
one of mademoiselle. Her father Avas a mem- 
ber of the noble Milanese family of the same 
name, therefore the young lady is well born. 
Her father has been long dead ; his Avidow mar- 
ried again an English gentleman settled in Italy, 


THE PARISIANS. 


a scholar and antiquarian ; his name was Selby. 
This gentleman, also dead, bequeathed the sign- 
orina a small but sufficient competence. She 
is now an orphan, and residing with a compan- 
ion, a Signora Venosta, who was once a singer 
of some repute at the Neapolitan Theatre, in the 
orchestra of which her husband was principal 
performer; but she relinquished the stage sev- 
eral years ago on becoming a widow, and gave 
lessons as a teacher. She has the character of 
being a scientific musician, and of unblemished 
private respectability. Subsequently she was in- 
duced to give up general teaching, and under- 
take the musical education and the social charge 
of the young lady with her. This girl is said to 
have early given promise of extraordinary ex- 
cellence as a singer, and excited great interest 
among a coterie of literary critics and musical 
cognoscenti. She was to have come out at the 
Theatre of Milan a year or two ago, but her ca- 
reer has been suspended in consequence of ill 
health, for which she is now at Paris under the 
care of an English physician, who has made re- 
markable cures in all complaints of the respira- 
tory organs. M , the great composer, who 

knows her, says that in expression and feeling 
she has no living superior, perhaps no equal 
since Malibran.” 

“You seem, dear monsieur, to have taken 
much pains to acquire this information.” 

“No great pains were necessary; but had 
they been I might have taken them, for, as I 
have owned to you. Mademoiselle Cicogna, while 
she was yet a mystery to me, strangely interest- 
ed ray thoughts or my fancies. That interest 
has now ceased. The world of actresses and 
singers lies apart from mine.” 

“Yet,” said Alain, in a tone of voice that im- 
plied doubt, “if I understand Lemercier aright, 
you were going with him to the Bois on the 
chance of seeing again the lady in whom your 
interest has ceased.” 

“ Lemercier s account was not strictly accu- 
rate. He stopped his carriage to speak to me on 
quite another subject, on which I have consult- 
ed him, and then proposed to take me on to the 
Bois. I assented ; and it was not till we were 
in the caniage that he suggested the idea of see- 
ing whether the pearly-robed lady had resumed 
her walk in the alUe. You may judge how in- 
difterent I was to that chance when I preferred 
turning back with you to going on with him. 
Between you and me. Marquis, to men of our age, 
who have the business of life before them, and 
feel that if there be aught in which noblesse oblige 
it is a severe devotion to noble objects, there is 
nothing moi'e fatal to such devotion than allow- 
ing the heart to be blown hither and thither at 
every breeze of mere fancy, and dreaming our- 
selves into love with some fair creature whom 
we never could marry consistently with the ca- 
reer we have set before our ambition. I could 
not marry an actress — neither, I presume, could 
the Marquis de Rochebriant ; and the thought 
of a courtship which excluded the idea of mar- 
riage, to a yoting orphan of name unblemished — 
of virtue unsuspected — would certainly not be 
compatible with ‘devotion to noble objects.’ ” 

Alain involuntarily bowed his head in assent 
to the proposition, and, it may be, in submission 
to an implied rebuke. The two men walked in 
silence for some minutes, and Graham first 


30 

spoke, changing altogether the subject of con- 
versation. 

“Lemercier tells me you decline going much 
into this world of Paris — the capital of capitals 
— which appears so irresistibly attractive to us 
foreigners.” 

‘ ‘ Possibly ; but, to borrow your words, I have 
the business of life before me.” 

“Business is a good safeguard against the 
temptations to excess in pleasure, in which Paris 
abounds. But there is no business which does 
not admit of some holiday, and all business ne- 
cessitates commerce with mankind. Apropos, I 
was the other evening at the Duchess de Taras- 
con’s — a brilliant assembly, filled with ministers, 
senators, and courtiers. I heard your name men- 
tioned.” 

“Mine?” 

“Yes; Duplessis, the rising financier — who, 
rather to my surprise, was not only present 
among these official and decorated celebrities, 
but apparently quite at home among them — ask- 
ed the Duchess if she had not seen you since 
your arrival at Paris. She replied, ‘ No ; that 
though you were among her nearest connections, 
you had not called on her ;’ and bade Duplessis 
tell you that you were a monstre for not doing 
so. Whether or not Duplessis will take that lib- 
erty, I know not ; but you must pardon me if I 
do. She is a very charming woman, full of tal- 
ent ; and that stream of the world which reflects 
the stars, w'ith all their mythical influences on 
fortune, flows through her salons.'" 

“I am not born under those stars. I am a 
Legitimist.” 

“ I did .not forget your political creed ; but in 
England the leaders of opposition attend the sa- 
lons of the Prime Minister. A man is not sup- 
posed to compromise his opinions because he ex- 
changes social courtesies with those to whom his 
opinions are hostile. Pray excuse me if I am 
indiscreet — I speak as a traveler who asks for 
information — but do Legitimists really believe 
that they best serve their cause by declining any 
mode of competing with its opponents ? Would 
there not be a fairer chance for the ultimate vic- 
tory of their principles if they made their talents 
and energies individually prominent — if they were 
known as skillful generals, practical statesmen, 
eminent diplomatists, brilliant writers? — could 
they combine — not to sulk and exclude them- 
selves from the great battle-field of the world — 
but in their several ways to render themselves of 
such use to their country that some day or other, 
in one of those revolutionary crises to which 
Prance, alas ! must long be subjected, they would 
find themselves able to turn the scale of unde- 
cided councils and conflicting jealousies?” 

“ Monsieur, we hope for the day when the Di- 
vine Disposer of events will strike into the hearts 
of our fickle and erring countrymen the convic- 
tion that there will be no settled repose for Prance 
save under the sceptre of her rightful kings. But 
meanwhile we are — I see it more clearly since I 
have quitted Bretagne — we are a hopeless mi- 
nority.” 

“ Does not history tell us that the great changes 
of the world have been wrought by minorities? 
but on the one condition that the minorities shall 
noi be hopeless ? It is almost the other day that 
the Bonapartists were in a minority that their 
adversaries called hopeless, and the majority foi; 


iO 


THE PARISIANS. 


the Emperor is now so preponderant that I trem- 
ble for his safety. When a majority becomes so 
vast that intellect disappears in the crowd, the 
date of its destruction commences ; for by the law 
of reaction the minority is installed against it. 
It is the nature of things that minorities are al- 
ways more intellectual than multitudes, and in- 
tellect is ever at work in sapping numerical force. 
What your party want is hope, because without 
hope there is no energy. I remember hearing 
ray father say that when he met the Count de 
Chambord at Eras, that illustrious personage de- 
livered himself of a belle phrase much admired by 
his partisans. The Emperor was then President 
of the Republic, in a very doubtful and danger- 
ous position. France seemed on the verge of an- 
other convulsion. A certain distinguished poli- 
tician recommended the Count de Chambord to 
hold himself ready to enter at once as a candi- 
date for the throne. And the Count, with a be- 
nignant smile on his handsome face, answered, 

‘ All wrecks come to the shore — the shore does 
not go to the wrecks.’ ” 

“Beautifully said!” exclaimed the Marquis. 

“Not if Le beau est toujours le vrai. My fa- 
ther, no inexperienced nor unwise politician, in 
repeating the royal words, remarked ; ‘ The fal- 
lacy of the Count’s argument is in its metaphor. 
A man is not a shore. Do you not think that j 
the seiimen on board the wrecks would be more 
grateful to him who did not complacently com- 
pare himself to a shore, but considered himself a 
human being like themselves, and I'isked his own 
life in a boat, even though it were a cockle-shell, 
in the chance of saving theirs ?’ ” 

Alain de Rochebriant was a brave man, with 
that intense sentiment of patriotism which char- 
acterizes Frenchmen of every rank and persua- 
sion, unless they belong to the Internationalists ; 
and without pausing to consider, he cried, “Your 
father was right. ” , 

The Englishman resumed: “Need I say, my 
dear Marquis, that I am not a Legitimist? I 
am not an Imperialist, neither am I an Orlean- 
ist nor a Republican. Between all those polit- 
ical divisions it is for Frenchmen to make their 
choice, and for Englishmen to accept for France 
that government which France has established. 

I view things here as a simple observer. But it 
strikes me that, if I were a Frenchman in your 
position, I should think myself unworthy my 
ancestors if I consented to be an insignificant 
looker-on.” 

“You are not in my position,” said the Mar- 
quis, half mournfully, half haughtily, “and you 
can scarcely judge of it even in imagination.” 

“I need not much task my imagination; I 
judge of it by analogy. I was very much in your 
position when I entered upon what I venture to 
call my career; and it is the curious similarity 
between us in circumstances that made me wish 
for your friendship when that similarity was made 
known to me by Lemercier, who is not less gar- 
rulous than the true Parisian usually is. Permit 
me to say that, like you, I was reared in some 
pride of no ingloidous ancestiy. I was reared 
also in the expectation of great wealth. Those 
expectations were not realized: my father had 
the fault of noble natures — generosity pushed to 
imprudence : he died poor, and in debt. You 
retain the home of your ancestors ; I had to re- 
sign mine.” 


The Marquis had felt deeply interested in this 
narrative, and as Graham now paused, took his 
hand and pressed it. 

“One of our most eminent personages said to 
me about that time, ‘ Whatever a clever man of 
your age determines to do or to be, the odds are 
twenty to one that he has only to live on in or- 
der to do or to be it.’ Don’t you think he spoke 
truly? I think so.” 

“ I scarcely know what to think,” said Roche- 
briant ; “I feel as if you had given me so rough 
a shake when I was in the midst of a dull dream, 
that I do not yet know whether I am asleep or 
awake.” 

Just as he said this, and toward the Paris end 
of the Champs Elysees, there was a halt, a sen- 
sation among the loungers round them : many 
of them uncovered in salute. 

A man on the younger side of middle age, 
somewhat inclined to coipulence, with a very 
striking countenance, was riding slowly by. He 
returned the salutations he received with the care- 
less dignity of a personage accustomed to respect, 
and then reined in his horse by the side of a ba- 
rouche, and exchanged some words with a port- 
ly gentleman who was its sole occupant. The 
loungers, still halting, seemed to contemplate this 
parley — between him on horseback and him in 
the carriage — with A'ery eager interest. Some 
put their hands behind their ears and pressed 
forward, as if trying to overhear what was said. 

“I wonder,” quoth Graham, “whether, with 
all his cleverness, the Prince has in any w'ay de- 
cided what he means to do or to be.” 

“ The Prince !” said Rochebriant, rousing him- 
self from reverie ; “ what Prince ?” 

“Do you not recognize him by his wonderful 
likeness to the first Napoleon — him on horseback 
talking to Louvier, the great financier ?” 

“Is that stout bourgeois in the carriage Lou- 
vier — my mortgagee, Louvier ?” 

“Your mortgagee, my dear Marquis? Well, 
he is rich enough to be a very lenient one upon 
pay-day.” 

Hein! — I doubt his leniency,” said Alain. 
“ I have promised my avoue to meet him at din- 
ner. Do you think I did wrong ?” 

“ Wrong ! of course not ; he is likely to over- 
whelm you with civilities. Pray don’t refuse if 
he gives you an invitation to his soiree next Sat- 
urday — I am going to it. One meets there the 
notabilities most interesting to study — artists, 
authors, politicians, especially those who call 
themselves Republicans. He and the Prince 
agree in one thing — viz., the cordial reception 
they give to the men who w'ould destroy the state 
of things upon which Prince and financier both 
thrive. Hillo 1 here comes Lemercier on return 
from the Bois.” 

Lemercier’s coupe stopped beside the foot-path. 
“ What tidings of the Belle Inconnue ?” asked 
the Englishman. 

“ None ; she was not there. But I am re- 
warded — such an adventure — a dame of the haute 
volee — I believe she is a duchess. She was w'alk- 
ing with a lap-dog, a pure Pomeranian. A strange 
poodle flew at the Pomeranian. I drove off the 
poodle, rescued the Pomeranian, received the most 
gracious thanks, the sweetest smile : femme su- 
perbe, middle-aged. I prefer women of forty. 
Au revoir^ I am due at the club. ” 

Alain felt a sensation of relief that Lemercier 


THE PARISIANS. 


41 


had not seen the lady in the pearl-colored dress, 
and quitted the Englishman with a lightened 
heart. 


CHAPTER IV. 

‘ ‘ PiccoLA, piccola ! com' e cortese I another 
invitation from M. Louvier for next Saturday — 
conversazione." This was said in Italian by an 
elderly lady bursting noisily into the room — el- 
derly, yet with a youthful expression of face, ow- 
ing perhaps to a pair of very vivacious black eyes. 
She was dressed, after a somewhat slatternly fash- 
ion, in a wrapper of crimson merino much the 
worse for wear, a blue handkerchief twisted tur- 
ban-like round her head, and her feet encased in 
list slippers. The person to whom she addressed 
herself was a young lady with dark hair, which, 
despite its evident redundance, was restrained 
into smooth glossy braids over the forehead, and 
at the crown of the small graceful head into the 
simple knot which Horace has described as 
“ Spartan.” Her dress contrasted the speaker’s 
by an exquisite neatness. We have seen her be- 
fore as the lady in the pearl-colored robe, but 
seen now at home she looks much younger. She i 
was one of those whom, encountered in the streets 
or in society, one might guess to be married — 
probably a young bride ; for thus seen there was 
about her an air of dignity and of self-possession | 
which suits well with the ideal of chaste youthful 
matronage ; and in the expression of the face 
there was a pensive thoughtfulness beyond her 
years. But as she now sat by the open window 
arranging flowers in a glass .bowl, a book lying 
open on her lap, you would never have said, 
“What a handsome woman!” you would have 
said, “What a charming girl!” All about her 
was maidenly, innocent, and fresh. The dignity 
of her bearing was lost in household ease, the 
pensiveness of her expression in an untroubled 
serene sweetness. 

Perhaps many of my readers may have known 
friends engaged in some absorbing cause of 
thought, and who are in the habit when they go 
out, especially if on solitary walks, to take that 
cause of thought with them. The friend may 
be an orator meditating his speech, a poet his 
verses, a lawyer a difficult case, a physician an 
intricate malady. If you have such a friend, 
and you observe him thus away from his home, 
his face will seem to you older and graver. He 
is absorbed in the care that weighs on him. 
When you see him in a holiday moment at his 
own fireside, the care is thrown aside; perhaps 
he mastered while abroad the difficulty that had 
troubled him; he is cheerful, pleasant, sunny. 
This appears to be very much the case with per- 
sons of genius. When in their own houses we 
usually find them very playful and child-like. 
Most persons of real genius, whatever they may 
seem out-of-doors, are very sweet-tempered at 
home, and sweet temper is sympathizing and 
genial in the intercourse of private life. Cer- 
tainly, observing this girl as she now bends over 
the flowers, it would be difficult to believe her to 
be the Isaura Cicogna whose letters to Madame 
de Grantmesnil exhibit the doubts and struggles 
of an unquiet, discontented, aspiring mind. Only 
in one or two passages in those letters would you 
have guessed at the writer in the girl as we now 


see her. It is in those passages where she ex- 
presses her love of harmony, and her repugnance 
to contest — those were characteristics you might 
have read in her face. 

Certainly the girl is very lovely — what long 
dark eyelashes, what soft, tender, dark blue e}'iBs 
— now that she looks up and smiles, what a be- 
witching smile it is! — by what sudden play of 
rippling dimples the smile is enlivened and re- 
doubled ! Do you notice one feature ? in very 
showy beauties it is seldom noticed ; but I, be- 
ing in my way a physiognomist, consider that it 
is always worth heeding as an index of charac- 
ter. It is the ear. Remark how delicately it is 
formed in her — none of that heaviness of lobe 
which is a sure sign of sluggish intellect and 
coarse perception. Hers is the artist’s ear. 
Note next those hands — how beautifully shaped ! 
small, but not doll-like hands — ready and nim- 
ble, firm and nervous hands, that could work for 
a helpmate. By no means very white, still less 
red, but somewhat embrowned as by the sun, 
such as you may see in girls reared in southern 
climates, and in her perhaps betokening an im- 
pulsive character which had not accustomed it- 
self, when at sport in the open air, to the thrall- 
dom of gloves — very impulsive people, even in 
cold climates, seldom do. 

In conveying to us by a few bold strokes an 
idea of the sensitive, quick-moved, warm-blooded 
Henry II., the most impulsive of the Plantage- 
nets, his contemporary chronicler tells us that 
rather than imprison those active hands of his, 
even in hawking-gloves, he would suffer his fal- 
con to fix its sharp claws into his wrist. No 
doubt there is a difference as to what is befitting 
between a burly bellicose creature like Henry II. 
and a delicate young lady like Isaura Cicogna ; 
and one would not wish to see those dainty wrists 
of hers seamed and scarred by a falcon’s claws. 
But a girl may not be less exquisitely feminine 
for slight heed of artificial prettinesses. Isaura 
had no need of pale bloodless hands to seem one 
of Nature’s highest grade of gentlewomen even 
to the most fastidious eyes. About her there 
was a charm apart from her mere beauty, and 
often disturbed instead of heightened by her mere 
intellect : it consisted in a combination of exqui- 
site artistic refinement, and of a generosity of char- 
acter by which refinement was animated into vig- 
or and warmth. 

The room, which was devoted exclusively to 
Isaura, had in it much that spoke of the occu- 
pant. That room, when first taken furnished, 
had a good deal of the comfortless showiness 
which belongs to ordinary furnished apartments 
in France, especially in the Parisian suburbs, 
chiefly let for the summer — thin limp muslin cur- 
tains that decline to draw, stiff mahogany chairs 
covered with yellow Utrecht velvet, a tall secretaire 
in a dark corner, an oval buhl table set in tawdry 
ormolu, islanded in the centre of a poor but gaudy 
Scotch carpet, and but one other table of dull 
walnut-wood standing clothless before a sofa to 
match the chairs ; the eternal ormolu clock flank- 
ed by the two eternal ormolu candelabra on the 
dreary mantel-piece. Some of this garniture had 
been removed, others softened into cheeriness and 
comfort. The room somehow or other — thanks 
partly to a very moderate expenditure in pretty 
twills with pretty borders, gracefully simple table- 
covers, with one or two additional small tables 


42 


THE PARISIANS. 


and easy-chairs, two simple vases filled with flow- 
ers — thanks still more to a nameless skill in re- 
arrangement, and the disposal of the slight knick- 
knacks and well-bound volumes, which, even in 
traveling, women, who have cultivated the pleas- 
ure of taste, carry about with them — had been 
coaxed into that quiet harmony, that tone of con- 
sistent subdued color, which corresponded with 
the characteristics of the inmate. Most people 
might have been puzzled where to place the pi- 
ano, a semi-grand, so as not to take up too much 
space in the little room ; but where it was placed 
it seemed so at home that you might have sup- 
posed the room had been built for it. 

There are two kinds of neatness — one is too 
evident, and makes every thing about it seem 
trite and cold and stiff, and another kind of 
neatness disappears from our sight in a satisfied 
sense of completeness — like some exquisite, sim- 
ple, finished style of writing — an Addison’s or a 
St. Pierre’s. 

This last sort of neatness belonged to Isaura, 
and brought to mind the well-known line of Ca- 
tullus, when, on recrossing his threshold, he in- 
vokes its welcome — a line thus not inelegantly 
translated by Leigh Hunt — 

“Smile every dimple on the cheek of Home." 

I entreat the reader’s pardon for this long de- 
scriptive digression ; but Isaura is one of those 
characters which are called many-sided, and there- 
fore not very easy to comprehend. She gives us 
one side of her character in her correspondence 
with Madame de Grantmesnil, and another side 
of it in her own home with her Italian companion 
— half nurse, half chaperon. 

“ Monsieur Louvier is indeed very courteous,” 
said Isaura, looking up from the flowers with tlie 
dimpled smile we have noticed. “But I think, 
Madre, that we should do well to stay at home 
on Saturday — not peacefully, for I owe you your 
revenge at euchre." 

“You can’t mean it, Piccola!" exclaimed the 
signora in evident consternation. “ Stay at 
home! — why stay at home? Euchre is very 
well when there is nothing else to do ; but change 
is pleasant — le hon Dieu likes it — 

‘Ne caldo ne gelo 
Resta mai in cielo.’ 

And such beautiful ices one gets at M. Louvier’s. 
Did you taste the Pistachio ice? What fine 
rooms, and so well lit up ! — I adore light. And 
the ladies so beautifully dressed — one sees the 
fashions. Stay at home — play at euchre indeed ! 
Piccola, you can not be so cruel to yourself — you 
are young.” 

“But, dear Madre^ just consider — we are in- 
vited because we are considered professional sing- 
ers ; your reputation as such is of course estab- 
lished — mine is not ; but still I shall be asked to 
sing as I was asked before ; and you know Dr. 

C forbids me to do so except to a very small 

audience ; and it is so ungracious always to say 
‘ No and besides, did you not yourself say, when 
we came away last time from M. Louvier’s, that 
it was very dull — that you knew nobody — and 
that the ladies had such superb toilets that you 
felt mortified — and — ” 

‘ ‘ Zitto ! zitto ! you talk idly, Piccola — very 
idly. I was mortified then in my old blaek Lyons 
silk ; but have I not bought since then my beau- 


tiful Greek jacket — scarlet and gold-lace? and 
why should I buy it if I am not to show it ?” 

“But, dear Madre, the jacket is certainly very 
handsome, and will make an effect in a little din- 
ner at the Savarins’, or Mrs. Morley’s. But in a 
great formal reception like M. Louvier’s will it 
not look — ” 

“Splendid !” interrupted the signora. 

“ But singolare." 

“So much the better; did not that great En- 
glish lady wear such a jacket, and did not every 
one admire her — piu tosto invidia che compas- 
sione f' 

Isaura sighed. Now the jacket of the signora 
was a subject of disquietude to her friend. It so 
happened that a young English lady of the high- 
est rank and the rarest beauty had appeared at 
M. Louvier’s, and indeed generally in the beau 
monde of Paris, in a Greek jacket that became 
her very much. That jacket had fascinated, at 
M. Louvier’s, the eyes of the signora. But of 
this Isaura was unaware. The signora, on re- 
turning home from M. Louvier’s, had certainly 
lamented much over the mesquin appearance of 
her own old-fashioned Italian habiliments com- 
pared with the brilliant toilet of the gay Pari- 
siennes ; and Isaura — quite woman enough to 
sympathize with woman in such w’omanly vani- 
ties — proposed the next day to go with the sign- 
ora to one of the principal couturieres of Paris, 
and adapt the signora’s costume to the fashions 
of the place. But the signora having predeter- 
mined on a Greek jacket, and knowing by instinct 
that Isaura would be disposed to thwart that 
splendid predilection, had artfully suggested that 
it would be better to go to the couturiere with 
Madame Savarin, as being a more experienced 
adviser — and the coupe only held two. 

As Madame Savarin was about the same age 
as the signora, and dressed as became her years, 
and in excellent taste, Isaura thought this an ad- 
mirable suggestion ; and pressing into her chape- 
ron! s hand a billet de banque sufficient to re-equip 
her cap-a-pie, dismissed the subject from her 
mind. But the signora was much too cunning 
to submit her passion for the Greek jacket to 
the discouraging comments of Madame Savarin. 
Monopolizing the coupe, she became absolute 
mistress of the situation. She went to no fash- 
ionable couturierd s. She went to a magasin that 
she had seen advertised in t\\Q P elites Affiches as 
supplying superb costumes for fancy balls and 
amateur performers in private theatricals. She 
returned home triumphant, with a jacket still more 
dazzling to the eye than that of the English lady. 

When Isaura first beheld it, she drew back in 
a sort of superstitious terror, as of a comet or 
other blazing portent. 

‘ ‘ Cosa stupenda !" — (stupendous thing ! ) She 
might well be dismayed when the signora pro- 
posed to appear thus attired in M. Louvier’s sa- 
lon. What might be admired as coquetry of 
dress in a young beauty of rank so great that 
even a vulgarity in her would be called distingue, 
was certainly an audacious challenge of ridicule 
in the elderly ci-devant music-teacher. 

But how could Isaura, how can any one of 
common humanity, say to a woman resolved 
upon wearing a certain dress, “You are not 
young and handsome enough for that ?” Isaura 
could only murmur, “For many reasons I would 
rather stay at home, dear Madre'." 


THE PARISIANS. 


43 


“Ah! I see you are ashamed of me,” said 
the signora, in softened tones: “very natural. 
When the nightingale sings no more, she is only 
an ugly brown bird and therewith the Signora 
Venosta seated herself submissively, and began 
to cry. 

On this Isaura sprang up, wound her arms 
round the signora’s neck, soothed her with coax- 
ing, kissed and petted her, and ended by saying, 
“Of course we will go and, “ but let me choose 
you another dress — a dark green velvet trimmed 
with blonde — blonde becomes you so well.” 

“No, no — I hate green velvet; any body can 
wear that. Piccola, I am not clever like thee ; 
I can not amuse myself like thee with books. 
I am in a foreign land. I have a poor head, 
but I have a big heart” (another burst of tears) ; 
“ and that big heart is set on my beautiful Greek 
jacket.” 

“Dearest Madre,^' said Isaura, half weeping 
too, “forgive me; you are right. The Greek 
jacket is splendid ; I shall be so pleased to see 
you wear it. Poor Madre — so pleased to think 
that in the foreign land you are not without 
something that pleases you” 


CHAPTER V. 

Conformably with his engagement to meet 
M. Louvier, Alain found himself on the day and 
at the hour named in M. Gandrin’s salon. On 
this occasion Madame Gandrin did not appear. 
Her husband was accustomed to give diners 
d'hommes. The great man had not yet arrived. 
“I think, Marquis,” said M. Gandrin, “ that you 
will not regi’et having followed my advice : my 
representations have disposed Louvier to regard 
you with much favor, and he is certainly flattered 
by being permitted to make your personal ac- 
quaintance.” 

The avou€ had scarcely finished this little 
speech when M. Louvier was announced. He 
entered with a beaming smile, which did not de- 
tract from his imposing presence. His flatterers 
had told him that he had a look of Louis Phi- 
lippe ; therefore he had sought to imitate the 
dress and bonhomie of that monarch of the mid- 
dle class. He wore a wig, elaborately piled up, 
and shaped his whiskers in royal harmony with 
the royal wig. Above all, he studied that social 
frankness of manner with which the able sover- 
eign dispelled awe of his presence or dread of his 
astuteness. Decidedly he was a man very pleas- 
ant to converse and to deal with — so long as there 
seemed to him something to gain and nothing to 
lose by being pleasant. He returned Alain’s bow 
by a cordial offer of both expansive hands, into the 
grasp of which the hands of the aristocrat utterly 
disappeared. ‘ ‘ Channed to make your acquaint- 
ance, Marquis — still more charmed if you will let 
me be useful during your s^jour at Paris. Ma 
foi, excuse my bluntness, but you are a fort beau 
gargon. Monsieur, your father, was a handsome 
man, but you beat him hollow. Gandrin, my 
friend, would not you and I give half our for- 
tunes for one year of this fine fellow’s youth spent 
at Paris ? Peste ! what love-letters we should 
have, with no need to buy them by billets de 
banque Thus he ran on, much to Alain’s con- 
fusion, till dinner was announced. Then there 


was something grandiose in the frank bourgeois 
style wherewith he expanded his napkin and 
twisted one end into his waistcoat — it was so 
manly a renunciation of the fashions which a 
man so repandu in all circles might be supposed 
to follow — as if he were both too great and too 
much in earnest for such frivolities. He was 
evidently a sincere bon vivant^ and M. Gandrin 
had no less evidently taken all requisite pains to 
gratify his taste. The Montrachet serv'ed with 
the oysters was of precious vintage. The vin de 
madere which accompanied the potage a la bisque 
would have contented an American. And how 
radiant became Louvier’s face, when among the 
entries he came upon laitances de carpes ! ‘ ‘ The 
best thing in the world,” he cried, “ and one gets 
it so seldom since the old Rocher de Cancale has 
lost its renown. At private bouses, what does 
one get now ? — blanc de poulet — flavorless trash. 
After all, Gandrin, when we lose the love-letters, 
it is some consolation that laitances de carpes 
and sautes de foie gras are still left to fill up the 
void in our hearts. Marquis, heed my counsel ; 
cultivate betimes the taste for the table ; that and 
whist are the sole resources of declining years. 
You never met my old friend Talleyrand — ah, 
no! he was long before your time. He culti- 
vated both, but he made two mistakes. No 
man’s intellect is perfect on all sides. He con- 
fined himself to one meal a day, and he never 
learned to play well at whist. Avoid his errors, 
my young friend — avoid them. Gandrin, I guess 
this pine-apple is English — it is superb.” 

“You are right — a present from the Marquis 
of H .” 

“Ah! instead of a fee, I wager. The Mar- 
quis gh'es nothing for nothing, dear man ! Droll 
people the English. You have never visited En- 
gland, I presume, cher Rochebriant ?” 

The affable financier had already made vast 
progress in familiarity with his silent fellow-guest. 

When the dinner was over and the three men 
had re-entered the salon for coffee and liqueurs, 
Gandrin left Louvier and Alain alone, saying he 
was going to his cabinet for cigars which he 
could recommend. Then Louvier, lightly pat- 
ting the Marquis on the shoulder, said, with what 
the French call eff'vsion, “My dear Rochebriant, 
your father and I did not quite understand each 
other. He took a tone of grand seigneur that 
sometimes wounded me ; and I in turn was per- 
haps too Hide in asserting my rights— as creditor, 
shall I say ? — no, as fellow-citizen ; and French- 
men are so vain, so oversusceptible — fire up at 
a word — take offense when none is meant. We 
two, my dear boy, should be superior to such 
national foibles. Bref—1 have a mortgage on 
your lands. Why should that thought mar our 
friendship ? At my age, though I am not yet 
old, one is flattered if the young like us — pleased 
if we can oblige them, and remove from their ca- 
reer any little obstacle in its way. Gandrin tells 
me you wish to consolidate all the charges on 
your estate into one on lower rate of interest. 
Is it so ?” 

“I am so advised,” said the Marquis. 

“And very rightly advised; come and talk 
with me about it some day next week. I hope 
to have a large sum of money set free in a few 
days. Of course mortgages on land don’t pay like 
speculations at the Bourse ; but I am rich enough 
to please myself. We will see — we will see.” 


u 


THE PARISIANS. 


Here Gandrin returned with the cigars ; but 
Alain at that time never smoked, and Louvier 
excused himself, with a laugh and a sly wink, on 
the plea that he was going to pay his respects— 
as doubtless that joli gargon was going to do, 
likewise — to a helle dame who did not reckon the 
smell of tobacco among the perfumes of Houbi- 
gant or Arabia. 

“Meanwhile,” added Louvier, turning ,to Gan- 
drin, “ I have something to say to you on busi- 
ness about the contract for that new street of 
mine. No hurry — after our young friend has 
gone to his ‘assignation.’ ” 

Alain could not misinterpret the hint ; and in 
a few moments took leave of his host more sur- 
prised than disappointed that the financier had 
not invited him, as Graham had assumed he 
would, to his soiree the following evening. 

When Alain was gone, Louvier’s jovial man- 
ner disappeared also, and became bluffly rude 
rather than bluntly cordial. 

“Gandrin, what did you mean by saying that 
that young man was no muscadin ? Muscadin 
— aristocrat — offensive from top to toe.” 

“You amaze me — you seemed to take to him 
so cordially.” 

“And pray, were you too blind to remark 
with what cold reserve he responded to my con- 
descensions? How he winced when I called 
him Rochebriant ! how he colored when I call- 
ed him ‘dear boy!’ These aristocrats think we 
ought to thank them on our knees when they 
take our money, and ” — here Louvier’s face dark- 
ened — “seduce our women.” 

“Monsieur Louvier, in all France I do not 
know a greater aristocrat than yourself.” 

I don’t know whether M. Gandrin meant that 
speech as a compliment, but M. Louvier took it 
as such — laughed complacently and rubbed his 
hands. “Ay, ay, millionnaires are the real aris- 
tocrats, for they have power, as my beau Marquis 
will soon find. I must bid you good-night. Of 
course I shall see Madame Gandrin and yourself 
to-morrow. Prepare for a motley gathering — 
lots of democrats and foreigners, with artists and 
authors, and such creatures.” 

“Is that the reason why you did not invite 
the Marquis ?” 

“To be sure; I would not shock so pure a 
Legitimist by contact with the sons of the peo- 
ple, and make him still colder to myself. No ; 
when he comes to my house he shall meet lions 
and viveurs of the haut ton^ who will play into 
my hands by teaching him how to ruin himself 
in the quickest manner and in the genre Louis 
XV. JBonsoir^ mon vieux.^' 


CHAPTER VI. 

The next night Graham in vain looked round 
for Alain in M. Louvier’s salons, and missed his 
high-bred mien and melancholy countenance. 
M. Louvier had been for some four years a child- 
less widower, but his receptions were not the less 
numerously attended, nor his establishment less 
magnificently monte for the absence of a presid- 
ing lady: veiy much the contrary; it was no- 
ticeable how much he had increased his status 
and prestige as a social personage since the death 
of his unlamented spouse. 


To say truth, she had been rather a heavy 
drag on his triumphal car. She had been the 
heiress of a man who had amassed a great deal 
of money ; not in the higher walks of commerce, 
but in a retail trade. 

Louvier himself was the son of a rich money- 
lender ; he had entered life with an ample for- 
tune and an intense desire to be admitted into 
those more brilliant circles in which fortune can 
be dissipated with ^clat. He might not have 
attained this object but for the friendly counte- 
nance of a young noble who was then 

“The glass of fashion and the mould of form.” 

But this young noble, of whom later we shall 
hear more, came suddenly to grief ; and when 
the money-lender’s son lost that potent protect- 
or, the dandies, previously so civil, showed him 
a very cold shoulder. 

Louvier then became an ardent democrat, and 
recruited the fortune he had impaired by the 
aforesaid marriage, launched into colossal specu- 
lations, and became enormously rich. His aspi- 
rations for social rank now revived, but his wife 
sadly interfered with them. She was thrifty by 
nature ; sympathized little with her husband’s 
genius for accumulation ; always said he would 
end in a hospital ; hated Republicans ; despised 
authors and artists ; and by the ladies of the 
beau monde was pronounced common and vulgar. 

So long as she lived, it was impossible for 
Louvier to realize his ambition of having one of 
the salons which at Paris establish celebrity and 
position. He could not then command those ad- 
vantages of wealth which he especially coveted. 
He was eminently successfid in doing this now. 
As soon as she was safe in Pere la Chaise, he 
enlarged his hotel by the purchase and annexa- 
tion of an adjoining house ; redecorated and re- 
furnished it, and in this task displayed, it must 
be said to his credit, or to that of the adminis- 
trators he selected for the purpose, a nobleness 
of taste rarely exhibited nowadays. His collec- 
tion of pictures was not large, and consisted ex- 
clusively of the French school, ancient and mod- 
ern, for in all things Louvier affected the patriot. 
But each of those pictures was a gem ; such Wat- 
teaus ! such Greuzes ! such landscapes by Patel ! 
and, above all, such masterpieces by ffngres, Hor- 
ace Vernet, and Delaroche, were w^orth all the 
doubtful originals of Flemish and Italian art which 
make the ordinary boast of private collectors. 

These pictures occupied tw'o rooms of moder- 
ate size, built for their reception, and lighted 
from above. The great salon to W'hich they led 
contained treasures scarcely less precious ; the 
walls were covered with tlie richest silks which 
the looms of Lyons could produce. Every piece 
of furniture here was a work of art in its way : 
console-tables of Florentine mosaic, inlaid with 
pearl and lapis lazuli ; cabinets in which the 
I exquisite designs of the renaissance were carved 
in ebony; colossal vases of Russian malachite, 
but wrought by French artists. The very knick- 
knacks scattered carelessly about the room might 
have been admired in the cabinets of the Palaz- 
zo Pitti. Beyond this room lay the salle de 

danse, its ceiling painted by , supported by 

white marble columns, the glazed balcony and 
the angles of the room filled with tiers of ex- 
otics. In the dining-room, on the same floor, on 
the other side of the landing-place, were stored 


THE PARISIANS. 


45 


in glazed buffets, not only vessels and salvers of 
plate, silver and gold, but, more costly still, 
matchless specimens of Sevres and Limoges, and 
medieval varieties of Venetian glass. On the 
ground -floor, which opened on the lawn of a 
large garden, Louvier had his suit of private 
apartments, furnished, as he said, “simply ac- 
cording to English notions of comfort.” En- 
glishmen would have said, “according to French 
notions of luxuiy.” Enough of these details, 
which a writer can not give without feeling him- 
self somewhat vulgarized in doing so, but with- 
out a loose general idea of which a reader would 
not have an accurate conception of something 
not vulgar — of something grave, historical, pos- 
sibly tragical, the existence of a Parisian million- 
naire at the date of this narrative. 

The evidence of wealth was every where man- 
ifest at M. Louvier’s, but it was every where re- 
fined by an equal evidence of taste. The apart- 
ments devoted to hospitality ministered to the 
delighted study of artists, to whom free access 
was given, and of whom two or three might be 
seen daily in the “show-rooms,” copying pic- 
tures or taking sketches of rare articles of furni- 
ture or effects for palatian interiors. 

Among the things which rich English visitors 
of Paris most coveted to see was M. Louvier’s 
hotel ; and few among the richest left it without 
a sigh of envy and despair. Only in such Lon- 
don houses as belonged to a Sutherland or a Hol- 
ford could our metropolis exhibit a splendor as 
opulent and a taste as refined. 

M. Louvier had his set evenings for popular 
assemblies. At these were entertained the Lib- 
erals of every shade, from tricolor to rouge, with 
the artists and writers most in vogue, pele-mele 
with decorated diplomatists, ex-ministers, Or- 
leanists, and Republicans, distinguished foreign- 
ers, plutocrats of the Bourse, and lions male and 
female from the arid nurse of that race, the 
Chaussee d’Antin. Of his more select reunions 
something will be said later. 

“And how does this poor Paris metamor- 
phosed please Monsieur Vane ?” asked a French- 
man with a handsome intelligent countenance, 
very carefully dressed, though in a somewhat by- 
gone fashion, and carrying off his tenth lustrum 
with an air too sprightly to evince any sense of 
the weight. 

This gentleman, the Vicomte de Breze, was 
of good birth, and had a legitimate right to his 
title of Vicomte, which is more than can be said 
of many vicomtes one meets at Paris. He had 
no other property, however, than a principal share 
in an influential journal, to which he was a live- 
ly and sparkling contributor. In his youth, un- 
der the reign of Louis Philippe, he had been a 
chief among literary exquisites, and Balzac was 
said to have taken him more than once as his i 
model for those brilliant young vauriens who I 
figure in the great novelist’s comedy of Human 
Life. The Vicomte’s fashion expired with the 
Orleanist dynasty. 

“Is it possible, my dear Vicomte,” answered 
Graham, “not to be pleased with a capital so 
marvelously embellished?” 

. “ Embellished it may be to foreign eyes,” said 
the Vicomte, sighing, “ but not improved to the | 
taste of a Parisian like me. I miss the dear | 
Paris of old — the streets associated with my I 
beaux jours are no more. Is there not some- I 


thing drearily monotonous in those interminable 
perspectives? How frightfully the way length- 
ens before one’s eyes ! In the twists and curves 
of the old Paris one was relieved from the pain 
of seeing how far one had to go from one spot 
to another — each tortuous street had a separate 
idiosyncrasy ; what picturesque diversities, what 
interesting recollections — all swept away ! Mon 
Lieu ! and what for ? Miles of florid fagades, 
staring and glaring at one with goggle-eyed pit- 
iless windows. House rents trebled; and the 
consciousness that, if you venture to grumble, 
under-ground railways, like concealed volcanoes, 
can, burst forth on you at any moment with an 
eruption of bayonets and muskets. This maudit 
empire seeks to keep its hold on France much as 
a grand seigneur seeks to enchain a nymph of 
the ballet, tricks her out in finery and baubles, 
and insures her infidelity the moment he fails to 
satisfy her whims.” 

“Vicomte,” answered Graham, “I have had 
the honor to know you since I was a small boy 
at a preparatory school home for the holidays, 
and you were a guest at my father’s country 
house. You were then fete, as one of the most 
promising writers among the young men of the 
day, especially favored by the princes of the 
reigning family. I shall never forget the im- 
pression made on me by your brilliant appear- 
ance and your no less brilliant talk.” 

“AA/ ces beaux jours ! ce hon Louis Philippe, 
ce cher petit Joinville," sighed the Vicomte. 

“But at that day 3'ou compared le bon Louis 
Philippe to Robert Macaire. You described all 
his sons, including, no doubt, ce cher petit Join- 
ville, in terms of resentful contempt, as so many 
plausible gamins whom Robert Macaire was train- 
ing to cheat the public in the interest of the fam- 
ily firm. I remember my father saying to you 
in answer, ‘ No royal house in Europe has more 
sought to develop the literatui'e of an epoch, and 
to signalize its representatives by social respect 
and official honors, than that of the Orleans dy- 
nasty ; you, M. de Breze, do but imitate your 
elders in seeking to destroy the dynasty under 
which you flourish ; should you succeed, you 
homines de plume will be the first sufferers and 
the loudest complainers.’” 

“ Cher Monsieur Vane" said the Vicomte, smil- 
ing complacently, “your father did me great 
honor in classing me with Victor Hugo, Alexan- 
dre Dumas, Emile de Girardin, and the other 
stars of the Orleanist galaxy, including our friend 
here, M. Savarin. A very superior man was your 
father.” 

“And,” said Savarin, who, being an Orleanist, 
had listened to Graham’s speech with an approv- 
ing smile — “and if I remember right, my dear 
De Breze, no one was more severe than yourself 
on poor De Lamartine and the Republic that 
succeeded Louis Philippe ; no one more emphat- 
ically expressed the yearning desire for another 
Napoleon to restore order at home and renown 
abroad. Now you have got another Napoleon.” 

“And I want change for my Napoleon,” said 
De Breze, laughing. 

“ My dear Vicomte,” said Graham, “one thing 
we may all grant, that in culture and intellect 
you are far superior to the mass of your fellow- 
Parisians ; that you are therefore a favorable type 
of their political character.” 

“AA, mon cher, vous etes trap aimable." 


46 


THE PAKISIANS. 


“And therefore I venture to say this, if the 
archangel Gabriel were permitted to descend to 
Paris and form the best government for Prance 
that the wisdom of seraph could devise, it would 
not be two years — I doubt if it would be six 
months — before out of this Paris, which you call 
the Foyer des Idees, would emerge a powerful 
party, adorned by yourself and other homrnes de 
plume, in favor of a revolution for the benefit of 
ce bon Satan and ce cher petit Beelzebub.” 

“What a pretty vein of satire you have, mon 
cher !" said the Vicomte, good-humoredly ; ‘ ‘ there 
is a sting of truth in your witticism. Indeed, 
I must send you some articles of mine in which 
I have said much the same thing — les beaux es- 
prits se rencontrent. The fault of us French is 
impatience — desire of change ; but then it is that 
desire which keeps the world going and retains 
our place at the head of it. However, at this 
time we are all living too fast for our money to 
keep up with it, and too slow for our intellect 
not to flag. We vie with each other on the road 
to ruin, for in literature all the old paths to fame 
are shut up.” 

Here a tall gentleman, with whom the Vicomte 
had been conversing before he accosted Vane, 
and who had remained beside De Breze listening 
in silent attention to this colloquy, intei-posed, 
speaking in the slow voice of one accustomed to 
measure his words, and with a slight but unmis- 
takable German accent — “There is that, M. de 
Bre'ze, which makes one think gravely of what 
you say so lightly. Viewing things with the un- 
prejudiced eyes of a foreigner, I recognize much 
for which France should be grateful to the Em- 
peror. Under his sway her material resources 
have been marvelously augmented; her com- 
merce has been placed by the treaty with En- 
gland on sounder foundations, and is daily ex- 
hibiting richer life ; her agiiculture has made a 
prodigious advance wherever it has allowed room 
for capitalists, and escaped from the curse of pet- 
ty allotments . and peasant proprietors — a curse 
which would have ruined any country less blessed 
by Nature ; turbulent factions have been quelled ; 
internal order maintained ; the external prestige 
of France, up at least to the date of the Mexican 
war, increased to an extent that might satisfy even 
a Frenchman’s amour propre ; and her advance in 
civilization has been manifested by the rapid cre- 
ation of a naval power which should put even En- 
gland on her mettle. But, on the other hand — ” 

“Ay, on the other hand,” said the Vicomte. 

“On the other hand, there are in the imperial 
system two causes of decay and of rot silently at 
work. They may not be the faults of the Em- 
peror, but they are such misfortunes as may cause 
the fall of the empire. The first is an absolute 
divorce between the political system and the in- 
tellectual culture of the nation. The throne and 
the system rest on universal suffrage — on a suf- 
frage which gives to classes the most ignorant a 
power that preponderates over all the healthful 
elements of knowledge. It is the tendency of 
all ignorant multitudes to personify themselves, 
as it were, in one individual. They can not com- 
prehend you when you argue for a principle ; they 
do comprehend you when you talk of a name. 
The Emperor Napoleon is to them a name, and 
the prefects and officials who influence their votes 
are paid for incorporating all principles in the 
shibboleth of that single name. You have thus 


sought the well-spring of a political system in 
the deepest stratum of popular ignorance. To 
rid popular ignorance of its normal revolutionary 
bias, the rural peasants are indoctrinated with the 
conservatism that comes from the fear which ap- 
pertains to property. They have their roods of 
land or their shares in a national loan. Thus 
you estrange the crassitude of an ignorant de- 
mocracy still more from the intelligence of the 
educated classes by combining it with the most 
selfish and abject of all the apprehensions that 
are ascribed to aristocracy and wealth. What 
is thus imbedded in the depths of your society 
makes itself shown on the surface. Napoleon 
III. has been compared to Augustus ; and there 
are many startling similitudes between them in 
character and in fate. Each succeeds to the 
heritage of a great name that had contrived to 
unite autocracy with the popular cause. Each 
subdued all rival competitors, and inaugurated 
despotic rule in the name of freedom. Each 
mingled enough of sternness with ambitious will 
to stain with bloodshed the commencement of 
his power ; but it would be an absurd injustice to 
fix the same degree of condemnation on the coup 
(Tetat as humanity fixes on the earlier cruelties 
of Augustus. Each, once firm in his seat, be- 
came mild and clement : Augustus perhaps from 
policy, Napoleon III. from a native kindliness of 
disposition which no fair critic of character can 
fail to acknowledge. Enough of similitudes ; 
now for one salient difference. Observe how 
earnestly Augustus strove, and how completely 
he succeeded in the task, to rally round him all 
the leading intellects in every grade and of every 
party — the followers of Antony, the friends of 
Brutus — every great captain, every great states- 
man, every great writer, every man who could 
lend a ray of mind to his own Julian constellation, 
and make the age of Augustus an era in the an- 
nals of human intellect and genius. But this has 
not been the good fortune of your Emperor. The 
result of his system has been the suppression of 
intellect in every department. He has rallied 
round him not one great statesman ; his praises 
are hymned by not one great poet. The c€Ubri- 
tes of a former day stand aloof, or, preferring 
exile to constrained allegiance, assail him with 
unremitting missiles from their asylum in foreign 
shores. His reign is sterile of new cd^brites. 
The few that arise enlist themselves against him. 
Whenever he shall ventui e to give full freedom 
to the press and to the legislature, the intellect 
thus sup})ressed or thus hostile will burst forth in 
collected volume. His partisans have not been 
trained and disciplined to meet such assailants. 
They will be as weak as no doubt they will be 
violent. And the worst is that the intellect 
thus rising in mass against him will be warped 
and distorted, like captives who, being kept in 
chains, exercise their limbs, on escaping, in ve- 
hement jumps without definite object. The di- 
rectors of emancipated opinion may thus be ter- 
rible enemies to the Imperial Government, but 
they will be very unsafe councilors to France. 
Concurrently with this divorce fietween the im- 
perial system and the national intellect — a di- 
vorce so complete that even your salons have lost 
their wit, and even your caricatures their point— 
a corruption of manners which the empire, I 
own, did not originate, but inherit, has become 
so common that every one owns and nobody 


THE PARISIANS. 


47 


blames it. The gorgeous ostentation of the Court 
has perverted the habits of the people. The in- 
telligence obstructed from other vents betakes it- 
self to speculating for a fortune, and the greed 
of gain and the passion for show are sapping 
the noblest elements of the old French manhood. 
Public opinion stamps with no opprobrium a min- 
ister or favorite who profits by a job ; and I fear 
you will find that jobbing pervades all your ad- 
ministrative departments.” 

“All very true,” said De Breze, with a shrug 
of the shoulders, and in a tone of levity that 
seemed to ridicule the assertion he volunteered ; 
“Virtue and Honor banished from courts and 
salons and the cabinets of authors, ascend to fairer 
heights in the attics of ouvriers.” 

“The ouvriers, ouvriers of Paris!” cried this 
terrible German. 

“Ay, Monsieur le Comte, what can you say 
against our ouvriers ? A German count can not 
condescend to learn any thing about ces petits 
gens." 

“ Monsieur,” replied the German, “ in the eyes 
of a statesman there are no petits gens, and in 
those of a philosopher nopetites choses. We in Ger- 
many have too many difficult problems affecting 
our working classes to solve, not to have induced 
me to glean all the information I can as to the 
ouvriers of Paris. They have among them men of 
aspirations as noble as can animate the souls of 
philosophers and poets, perhaps not the less no- 
ble because common-sense and experience can 
not follow their flight. But as a body, the oti- 
vriers of Paris have not been elevated in political 
morality by the benevolent aim of the Emperor to 
find them ample work and good wages independ- 
ent of the natural laws that regulate the markets 
of labor. Accustomed thus to consider the state 
bound to maintain them, the moment the state 
fails in that impossible task, they will accommo- 
date their honesty to a rush upon property under 
the name of social reform. Have you not noticed 
how largely increased within the last few years is 
the number of those who cry out, ‘ La Proprie'te, 
c'est le vol?’ Have you considered the rapid 
growth of the International Association ? I do 
not say that for all these evils the empire is ex- 
clusively responsible. To a certain degree they 
are found in all rich communities, especially where 
democracy is more or less in the ascendant. To 
a certain extent they exist in the large towns of 
Germany; they are conspicuously increasing in 
England ; they are acknowledged to be danger- 
ous in the United States of America ; they are, I 
am told on good authority, making themselves vis- 
ible with the spread of civilization in Russia. But 
under the French empire they have%ecome glar- 
ingly rampant, and I venture to predict that the 
day is not far off when the rot at work through- 
out all layers and strata of French society will in- 
sure a fall of the fabric at the sound of which the 
world will ring. 

“There is many a fair and stately tree which 
continues to throw out its leaves and rear its crest 
till suddenly the wind smites it, and then, and not 
till then, the trunk which seems so solid is found 
to be but the rind to a mass of crumbled powder.” 

“ Monsieur le Comte,” said the Vicomte, “you 
are a severe critic and a lugubrious prophet. But 
a German is so safe from revolution that he takes 
alarm at the stir of movement which is the nor- 
mal state of the French esprit." 

D 


“French esprit may soon evaporate into Paris- 
ian hetise. As to Germany being safe from rev- 
olution, allow me to repeat a saying of Goethe’s — 
but has M. le Comte ever heard of Goethe?” 

“Goethe, of course — tresjoli ecrivain." 

“Goethe said to some one who was making 
much the same remark as yourself, ‘ We Germans 
are in a state of revolution now, but we do things 
so slowly that it will be a hundred years before we 
Germans shall find it out. But when completed, 
it will be the greatest revolution society has yet 
seen, and will last like the other revolutions that, 
beginning, scarce noticed, in Germany, have trans- 
formed the world.’ ” 

M. le Comte! Germans transformed 
the world ! What revolutions do you speak of?” 

“The invention of gunpowder, the invention 
of printing, and the expansion of a monk’s quar- 
rel with his Pope into the Lutheran revolution.” 

Here the German paused, and asked the Vicomte 
to introduce him to Vane, which De Breze did 
by the title of Count von Rudesheim. On hear- 
ing Vane’s name, the Count inquired if he were 
related to the orator and statesman, George Gra- 
ham Vane, whose opinions, uttered in Parliament, 
were still authoritative among German thinkers. 
This compliment to his deceased father immense- 
ly gratified, but at the same time considerably 
surprised, the Englishman. His father, no doubt, 
had been a man of much influence in the British 
House of Commons — a very weighty speaker, and, 
while in office, a first-rate administrator ; but En- 
glishmen kno\v what a House of Commons repu- 
tation is — how fugitive, how little cosmopolitan ; 
and that a German count should ever have heard 
of his father delighted but amazed him. In stat- 
ing himself to be the son of George Graham Vane, 
he intimated not only the delight, but the amaze, 
with the frank savoir vivre which was one of his 
salient characteristics. 

“ Sir, ” replied the German, speaking in very 
correct English, but still with his national accent, 
“ every German reared to political service studies 
England as the school for practical thought dis- 
tinct from impracticable theories. Long may 
you allow us to do so ; only excuse me one re- 
mark ; never let the selfish element of the practi- 
cal supersede the generous element. Your father 
never did so in his speeches, and therefore we ad- 
mired him. At the present day we don’t so much 
care to study English speeches. They may be in- 
sular — they are not European. I honor England ; 
Heaven grant that you may not be making sad 
mistakes in the belief that you can long remain 
England if you cease to be European.” Here- 
with the German bowed, not uncivilly — on the 
contrary, somewhat ceremoniously — and disap- 
peared with a Prussian secretary of embassy, 
whose arm he linked in his own, into a room less 
frequented. 

“ Vicomte, who and what is your German 
count ?” asked Vane. 

“A solemn pedant,” answered the lively Vi- 
comte — “a German count, que voulez-vous de 
plus ?" 


CHAPTER VII. 

A LITTLE later Graham found himself alone 
among the crowd. Attracted by the sound of 
music, he had strayed into one of the rooms 


48 


THE PARISIANS. 


whence it came, and in which, though his range 
of acquaintance at Paris was, for an Englishman, 
large and somewhat miscellaneous, he recognized 
no familiar countenance. A lady was playing the 
piano-forte — playing remarkably well — with ac- 
curate science, with that equal lightness and 
strength of finger which produces brilliancy of 
execution. But to appreciate her music one 
should be musical one’s self. It wanted the charm 
that fascinates the uninitiated. The guests in 
the room were musical connoisseurs — a class 
Avith whom Graham Vane had nothing in com- 
mon. Even if he had been more capable of 
enjoying the excellence of the player’s perform- 
ance, the glance he directed toward her would 
have sufficed to chill him into indifference. She 
was not young, and, with prominent features and 
puckered skin, was twisting her face into strange 
sentimental grimaces, as if terribly overcome by 
the beauty and pathos of her own melodies. To 
add to Vane’s displeasure, she was dressed in a 
costume Avholly antagonistic to his views of the 
becoming — in a Greek jacket of gold and scarlet, 
contrasted by a Turkish turban. 

Muttering “What she-mountebank have we 
here ?” he sank into a chair behind the door, 
and fell into an absorbed reverie. From this he 
was aroused by the cessation of the music, and the 
hum of subdued approbation by which it was fol- 
lowed. Above the hum swelled the imposing 
voice of M. Louvier, as he rose from a seat on 
the other side of the piano, by which his bulky 
form had been partially concealed. 

“Bravo! perfectly played — excellent! Can 
we not persuade your charming young country- 
Avoman to gratify us even by a single song ?” 
Then turning aside and addressing some one else 
invisible to Graham, he said, “Does that tyran- 
nical doctor still compel you to silence, mademoi- 
selle?” 

A voice so SAveetly modulated that if there 
Avere any sarcasm in the words it Avas lost in the 
softness of pathos, ansAvered, “Nay, M. Louvier, 
he rather overtasks the Avords at my command in 
thankfulness to those Avho, like yourself, so kindly 
regard me as something else than a singer.” 

It was not the she-mountebank Avho thus 
spoke. Graham rose and looked round Avith in- 
stinctive curiosity. He met the face that he said 
had haunted him. She too had lisen, standing 
near the piano, Avith one hand tenderly resting 
on the she-mountebank’s scarlet and gilded shoul- 
der — the face that haunted him, and yet Avith a 
difference. There Avas a faint blush on the clear 
j)ale cheek, a soft yet playful light in the grave 
dark blue eyes, which had not been visible in the 
countenance of the young lady in the peai l-color- 
ed robe. Graham did not hear Louvier’s reply, 
though no doubt it Avas loud enough for him to 
hear. He sank again into reverie. Other guests 
noAv came into the room, among them Frank 
Morleyy styled Colonel (eminent militaiy titles 
in the States do not always denote eminent mil- 
itary services), a Avealthy American, and his 
sprightly and beautiful wife. The Colonel was a 
clever man, rather stiff in his deportment, and 
grave in speech, but by no means Avithout a vein 
of dry humor. By the French he Avas esteemed 
a high-bred specimen of the kind of grand sei- 
gneur which democratic republics engender. He 
spoke French like a Parisian, had an imposing 
presence, and spent a great deal of money Avith 


the elegance of a man of taste and the generosity 
of a man of heart. His high breeding Avas not 
quite so well understood by the English, because 
the English are apt to judge breeding by little 
conventional rules not observed by the American 
colonel. He had a slight nasal twang, and intro- 
duced “Sir” Avith redundant ceremony in ad- 
dressing Englishmen, however intimate he might 
be with them, and had the habit (perhaps with 
a sly intention to startle or puzzle them) of 
adorning his style of conversation with quaint 
Americanisms. 

Nevertheless, the genial amiability and the in- 
herent dignity of his character made him ac- 
knowledged as a thorough gentleman by eveiy 
Englishman, however conventional in tastes, who 
became admitted into his intimate acquaintance. 

Mrs. Morley, ten or tAvelve years younger than 
her husband, had no' nasal twang, and employed 
no Americanisms in her talk, Avhich was frank, 
lively, and at times eloquent. She had a great 
ambition to be esteemed of a masculine under- 
standing : Nature unkindly frustrated that am- 
bition in rendering her a model of feminine grace. 
Graham Avas intimately acquainted with Colonel 
Morley ; and Avith Mrs. Morley had contracted 
one of those cordial friendships which, perfectly 
free alike from polite flirtation and Platonic 
attachment, do sometimes spring up between per- 
sons of opposite sexes Avithout the slightest dan- 
ger of changing its honest character into morbid 
sentimentality or unlawful pas.sion. The Mor- 
leys stopped to accost Graham, but the lady had 
scarcely said three Avoids to him before, catching 
sight of the haunting face, she darted toward 
it. Her husband, less emotional, bowed at the 
distance, and said, “To my taste. Sir, the Sign- 
orina Cicogna is the loveliest girl in the present 
bee* and full of mind. Sir.” 

“Singing mind,” said Graham, sarcastically, 
and in the ill-natured impulse of a man striving 
to check his inclination to admire. 

“I haA'e not heard her sing,” replied the 
American, dryly; “and the Avords ‘ singing mind’ 
are doubtless accurately English, since you em- 
ploy them ; but at Boston the collocation would 
be deemed barbarous. You fly off the handle. 
The epithet. Sir, is not in concord with the sub- 
stantive.” 

“Boston would be in the right, my dear Col- 
onel. I stand rebuked ; mind has little to do with 
singing.” 

“I take leave to deny that. Sir. You fire into 
the wrong flock, and Avould not hazard the remark 
if you had conversed as I have with Signorina 
Cicogna.” 

Before Graham could ansAver, Signorina Ci- 
cogna stood before him, leaning lightly on Mrs. . 
Morley’s arm. 

“Frank, you must take us into the refreshment- 
room,” said Mrs. Morley to her husband ; and 
then, turning to Graham, added, “Will you help 
to make Avay for us ?” 

Graham bowed, and offered his arm to the fair 
speaker. 

“No,” said she, taking her husband’s. “Of 
course you know the signorina, or as we usually 
call her. Mademoiselle Cicogna. No ? alloAv me 
to present you— Mr. Graham Vane— Mademoi- 


* Bee, a common expression in “the West” for a 
meeting or gathering of people. 


THE PARISIANS. 


49 


selle Cicogna. Mademoiselle speaks English like 
a native.” 

And thus abruptly Graham was introduced to 
the owner of the haunting face. He had lived 
too much in the great world all his life to retain 
the innate shyness of an Englishman, but he cer- 
tainly was confused and embarrassed when his 
eyes met Isaura’s, and he felt her hand on his 
arm. Before quitting the room, she paused and 
looked back — Graham’s look followed her own, 
and saw behind them the lady with the scarlet 
jacket escorted by some portly and decorated 
connoisseur. Isaura’s face brightened to anotlier 
kind of brightness — a pleased and tender light. 

“Poor dear Madre^'' she murmured to herself, 
in Italian. 

‘ ‘ Madre , ” echoed Graham, also in Italian . “I 
have been misinformed, then : that lady is your 
mother ?” 

Isaura laughed a pretty low silvery laugh, and 
replied in English, “She is not my mother, but 
1 call her Madre^ for I know no name more lov- 
ing.” 

Graham was tduched, and said, gently, “Your 
own mother was evidently very dear to you.” 

Isaura’s lip quivered, and she made a slight 
movement as if she would have withdrawn her 
hand from his arm. He saw that he had offend- 
ed or wounded her, and with the straightforward 
tVankness natural to him, resumed, quickly, 

“My remark was impertinent in a stranger; 
forgive it.” 

“There is nothing to forgive, monsieur.” 

The two now threaded their way through the 
crowd, both silent. At last Isaura, thinking she 
ought to speak first in order to show that Gra- 
ham had not otfended her, said, 

“ How lovely Mrs. Morley is !” 

“Yes, and I like the spirit and ease of her 
American manner : have you known her long, 
mademoiselle ?” 

“No; we met her for the first time some 
weeks ago at M. Savarin’s.” 

“ Was she very eloquent on the rights of wmm- 
en ?” 

“ What ! you have heard her on that subject ?” 

“ I have rarely heard her on any other, though 
she is the best and perhaps the cleverest friend I 
have at Paris ; but that may be my fault, for I 
like to start it. It is a relief to the languid Small- 
talk of society to listen to any one thoroughly in 
earnest upon turning tlie world topsy-turvy.” 

“ Do you suppose poor Mrs. Morley would seek 
to do that if she had her rights ?” asked Isaura, 
with her musical laugh. 

“Not a doubt of it; but perhaps you share 
her opinions.” 

' “I scarcely know what her opinions are, but — ” 

“Yes— but— ” 

“There is a — what shall I call it ? — a persua- 
sion — a sentiment — out of which the opinions 
probably spring that I do share.” 

“Indeed? a persuasion, a sentiment, for in- 
.stance, that a woman should have votes in the 
choice of legislators, and, I presume, in the task 
of legislation ?” 

“No, that is not what I mean. Still, that is 
an opinion, right or wrong, which grows out of 
the sentiment I speak of.” 

“Pray explain the sentiment.” 

“It is alw’ays so difficult to define a sentiment, 
but does it not strike you that in proportion as 


the tendency of modern civilization has been to 
raise women more and more to an intellectual 
equality with men — in proportion as they read 
and study and think — an uneasy sentiment, per- 
haps querulous, perhaps unreasonable, grows up 
within their minds that the conventions of tlie 
world are against the complete development of 
the faculties thus ai'oused and the ambition thus 
animated ; that they can not but rebel, though it 
may be silently, against the notions of the former 
age, when women were not thus educated ; no- 
tions that the aim of the sex should be to steal 
through life unremarked ; that it is a reproach to 
be talked of; that women are plants to be kept 
in a hot-house, and forbidden the frank liberty of 
growth in the natural air and sunshine of heaven ? 
This, at least, is a sentiment which has sprung 
up within myself, and I imagine that it is the 
sentiment which has given birth to many of the 
opinions or doctrines that seem absurd, and very 
likely are so to the general public. I don’t pre- 
tend even to have considered those doctrines. I 
don’t pretend to say w'hat may be the remedies 
for the restlessness and uneasiness I feel. I 
doubt if on this earth there be any remedies ; all 
I know is that 1 feel restless and uneasy.” 

Graham gazed on her countenance as she spoke, 
with an astonishment not unmingled with tender- 
ness and compassion — astonishment at the con- 
trast between a vein of reflection so hardy, ex- 
pressed in a style of language that seemed to him 
so masculine, and the soft velvet dreamy eyes, 
the gentle tones, and delicate purity of hues ren- 
dered younger still by the blush that deepened 
their bloom. 

At this moment they had entered the refresh- 
ment-room ; but a dense group being round the 
table, and both perhaps forgetting the object for 
which Mrs. Morley had introduced them to each 
other, they had mechanically seated themselves 
on an ottoman in a recess w hile Isaura was yet 
speaking. It must seem as strange to the read- 
er as it did to Graham that such a speech should 
have been spoken by so young a girl to an ac- 
quaintance so new. But in truth Isaura was 
very little conscious of Graham’s presence. She 
had got on a subject that peiplexed and torment- 
ed her solitary thoughts — she was but thinking 
aloud. 

“ I believe,” said Graham, after a pause, “that 
I comprehend your sentiment much better than I 
do Mrs. Morley’s opinions ; but permit me one 
observation. You say, truly, that the course of 
modern civilization has more or less affected the 
relative position of woman cultivated beyond that 
level on w'hich she was formerly contented to 
stand — the nearer perhaps to the heart of man 
because not lifting her head to his height — and 
hence a sense of restlesness, uneasiness. But do 
you suppose that, in this whirl and dance of the 
atoms which compose the rolling ball of the civ- 
ilized world, it is only w’omen that are made rest- 
less and uneasy? Do you not see, amidst the 
masses congregated in the w’ealthiest cities of the 
world, writhings and struggles against the re- 
ceived order of things? In,this sentiment of dis- 
content there is a certain truthfulness, because it 
is an element of human nature ; and how best to 
deal with it is a problem yet unsolved. But in 
the opinions and doctrines to which, among the 
masses, the sentiment gives birth, the wisdom of 
the wisest detects only the certainty of a common 


50 


THE PARISIANS. 


ruin, offering for reconstruction the same build- 
ing materials as the former edifice — materials 
not likely to be improved because they may be 
defaced. Ascend from the working classes to 
all others in which civilized culture prevails, and 
you will find that same restless feeling — the flut- 
tering of untried wings against the bars between 
wider space and their longings. Could you poll 
all the educated ambitious young men in England 
— perhaps in Europe — at least half of them, di- 
vided between a reverence for the past and a cu- 
riosity as to the future, would sigh, ‘I am born a 
century too late or a century too soon !’ ” 

Isaura listened to this answer with a profound 
and absorbing interest. It was the first time 
that a clever young man talked thus sympathet- 
ically to her, a clever young girl. 

Then rising, he said, “I see your Madre and 
our American friends are darting angry looks at 
me. They have made room for us at the table, 
and are wondering why I should keep you thus 
from the good things of this little life. One word 
more ere we join them — Consult your own mind, 
and consider whether your uneasiness and unrest 
are caused solely by conventional shackles on 
your sex. Are they not equally common to the 
youth of ours ? — common to all who seek in art, 
in letters, nay, in the stormier field of active life, 
to clasp as a reality some image yet seen but as 
a dream ?” 


CHAPTER VIII. 

No further conversation in the w'ay of sustain- 
ed dialogue took place that evening between Gra- 
ham and Isaura. 

The Americans and the Savarins clustered 
round Isaura when they quitted the refreshment- 
room. The party was breaking up. Vane would 
have offered his arm again to Isaura, but M. Sa- 
varin had forestalled him. The American was 
dispatched by his wife to see for the carriage ; 
and jMis. Morley said, with her wonted sprightly 
tone of command, 

“Now, Mr. Vane, you have no option but to 
take care of me to the shawl-room.” 

Madame Savarin and Signora Venosta had 
each found their cavaliers, the Italian still re- 
taining hold of the portly connoisseur, and the 
Frenchwoman accepting the safeguard of the Vi- 
comte de Breze. As they descended the stairs, 
Mrs. Morley asked Graham what he thought of 
the young lady to whom she had presented him. 

“ I think she is charming,” answered Graham. 

“Of course; that is the stereotyped answer 
to all such questions, especially by you English- 
men. In public or in private, England is the 
mouth-piece of platitudes.” 

“It is natural for an American to think so. 
Every child that has just learned to speak uses 
bolder expressions than its grandmamma ; but 
I am rather at a loss to know by what novelty 
of phrase an American would have answered 
your question.” 

“An American v^'ould have discovered that 
Isaura Cicogna had a soul, and his answer would 
have confessed it.” 

“ It strikes me that he would then have utter- 
ed a platitude more stolid than mine. Every 
Christian knows that the dullest human being 
has a soul. But, to speak frankly, I grant that 


my answer did not do justice to the signorina, 
nor to the impression she makes on me ; and 
putting aside the charm of the face, there is a 
charm in a mind that seems to have gathered 
stores of reflection which I should scarcely have 
expected to find in a young lady brought up to be 
a professional singer.” 

“You add prejudice to platitude, and are hor- 
ribly prosaic to-night ; but here we are in the 
shawl-room. I must take another opportunity 
of attacking you. Fray dine with us to-morrow ; 
you will meet our minister and a few other pleas- 
ant friends.” 

“ I suppose I must not say, ‘ I shall be charm- 
ed,’” answered Vane; “but I shall be.” 

“ Bon Dieti ! that horrid fat man has deserted 
Signora Venosta — looking for his own cloak, I 
dare say. Selfish monster! — go and hand her 
to her carriage — quick, it is announced!” 

Graham, thus ordered, hastened to offer his 
arm to the she-mountebank. Somehow she had 
acquired dignity in his eyes, and he did not feel 
the least ashamed of being in contact with the 
scarlet jacket. 

The signora grappled to him with a confiding 
familiarity. 

“lam afraid,” she said, in Italian, as they passed 
along the spacious hall to the •porte cochhre — “I 
am afraid that I did not make a good effect to- 
night — I was nervous : did not you perceive it ?” 

“No, indeed; you enchanted us all,” replied 
the dissimulator. 

“ How amiable you are to say so! — you must 
think that I sought for a compliment. So I did 
— you gave me more than I deserved. Wine is 
the milk of old men, and praise of old women. 
But an old man may be killed by too much wine, 
and an old woman lives all the longer for too 
much praise — huona notte." 

Here she sprang, lithesomely enough, into the 
carriage, and Isaura followed, escorted by M. 
Savarin. As the two men returned toward the 
shawl-room, the Frenchman said, “Madame Sa- 
varin and I complain that you have not let us see 
so much of you as we ought. No doubt you are 
greatly sought after; but are you free to take 
your soup with us the day after to-morrow ? You 
will meet a select few of my confreres.''’ 

“The day after to-morrow I will mark wdth a 
white stone. To dine with M. Savarin is an 
event to a man who covets distinction.” 

“Such compliments reconcile an author to his 
trade. You deserve the best return I can make 
you. You w'ill meet la belle Isaure. I have just 
engaged her and her chaperon. She is a girl of 
true genius, and genius is like those objects of 
virtu which belong to a former age, and become 
every day more scarce and more precious.” 

Here they encountered Colonel Morley and his 
wife hurrying to their carriage. The American 
stopped Vane, and whispered, “I am glad. Sir, 
to hear from my wife that you dine with us to- 
moi row. Sir, you will meet Mademoiselle Ci- 
cogna, and I am not without a kinkle* that you 
will be enthused.” 

“ This seems like a fatality,” soliloquized Vane 
as he walked through the deserted streets toward 
his lodging. “I strove to banish that haunting 
face from my mind. I had half forgotten it, and 
now — ” Here his murmur sank into silence. He 


* A notion. 


THE PARISIANS. 


51 


was deliberating in very conflicted thought wheth- 
er or not he should write to refuse the two invi- 
tations he had accepted. 

“Pooh!” he said at last, as he reached the 
door of his lodging ; “is my reason so weak that 
it should be influenced by a mere superstition ? 
Surely I know myself too well, and have tried 
myself too long, to fear that I should be untrue 
to the duty and ends of my life, even if I found 
my heart in danger of suffering.” 

Certainly the Fates do seem to mock our re- 
solves to keep our feet from their ambush, and 
our hearts from their snare. 

How our lives may be colored by that which 
seems to us the most trivial accident, the merest 
chance! Suppose that Alain de Kochebriant 
had been invited to that reunion at M. Louvier’s, 


and Graham Vane had accepted some other in- 
vitation and passed his evening elsewhere, Alain 
would probably have been presented to Isaura — 
what then might have happened ? The impres- 
sion Isaura had already made upon the young 
Frenchman was not so deep as that made upon 
Graham ; but then, Alain’s resolution to efface 
it was but commenced that day, and by no means 
yet confirmed. And if he had been the first 
clever young man to talk earnestly to that clever 
young girl, who can guess what impression he 
might have made upon her? His conversation 
might have had less philosophy and strong sense 
than Graham’s, but more of poetic sentiment and 
fascinating romance. 

However, the history of events that do not 
come to pass is not in the chronicle of the Fates. 


BOOK THIED. 


CHAPTER I. 

The next day the guests at the Morleys’ had 
assembled when Vane entered. His apology for 
impunctuality was cut short by the lively host- 
ess : “Your pardon is granted without the hu- 
miliation of asking for it ; we know that the 
characteristie of the English is always to be a 
little behindhand.” 

She then proceeded to introduce him to the 
American minister, to a distinguished American 
poet, w'ith a countenance striking for mingled 
sweetness and power, and one or two other of 
her countrymen sojourning at Paris; and this 
ceremony over, dinner was announced, and she 
bade Graham offer his arm to Mademoiselle 
Cicogna. 

“Have you ever visited the United States, 
mademoiselle?” asked Vane, as they seated 
themselves at the table. 

“No.” 

“It is a voyage you are sure to make soon.” 

“ Why so ?” 

“ Because report says you will create a great 
sensation at the very commencement of your ca- 
reer, and the New World is ever eager to wel- 
come each celebrity that is achieved in the Old, 
more especially that which belongs to your en- 
chanting art.” 

“True, Sir,” said an American senator, sol- 
emnly striking into the conversation ; “ we are 
an appreciative people, and if that lady be as 
fine a singer as I am told, she might command 
any amount of dollars.” 

Isaura colored, and turning to Graham, asked 
him in a low voice if he were fond of music. 

“1 ought, of course, to say ‘yes,’” answ'ered 
Graham, in the same tone; “but I doubt if 
that ‘yes’ would be an honest one. In some 
moods music — if a kind of music I like — affects 
me very deeply ; in other moods not at all. And 
I can not bear much at a time. A concert 
wearies me shamefully; even an opera always 
seems to me a great deal too long. But I ought 
to add that I am no judge of music ; that music 
was never admitted into my education ; and, be- 
tween ourselves, I doubt if there be one English- 
man in five hundred who would care for opera 


or concert if it w'ere not the fashion to say he 
did. Hoes my frankness revolt ^mu ?” 

“On the contrary, I sometimes doubt, espe- 
cially of late, if I am fond of music myself.” 

“ Signorina — pardon me — it is impossible that 
you should not be. Genius can never be untrue 
to itself, and must love that in which it excels — 
that by which it communicates joy, and,” he add- 
ed, with a half-suppressed sigh, “attains to glory.” 

“ Genius is a divine word, and not to be ap- 
plied to a singer,” said Isaura, with a humility in 
which there was an earnest sadness. 

Graham w’as touched and startled ; but before 
he could answer, the American minister appealed 
to him across the table, asking him if he had 
quoted accurately a passage in a speech by 
Graham’s distinguished father, in regard to the 
share which England ought to take in the polit- 
ical affairs of Europe. 

The conversation now became general; very 
political and very serious. Graham was drawn 
into it, and grew animated and eloquent. 

Isaura listened to him with admiration. She 
was struck by what seemed to her a nobleness of 
sentiment which elevated his theme above the 
level of commonplace polemics. She was pleased 
to notice, in the attentive silence of his intelli- 
gent listeners, that they shared the effect pro- 
duced on herself. In fact, Graham Vane was a 
born orator, and his studies had been those of a 
political thinker. In common talk he was but 
the accomplished man of the world, easy and 
frank and genial, with a touch of good-natured 
sarcasm. But when the subject started drew 
him upward to those heights in wliich politics 
become the science of humanity, he seemed a 
changed being. His cheek glowed, his eye 
brightened, his voice mellowed into richer tones, 
his language became unconsciously adorned. 
In such moments there might scarcely be an au- 
dience, even differing from him in opinion, 
which would not have acknowledged his spell. 

When the party adjourned to the salon, Isaura 
said, softly, to Graham, “ I understand why you 
did not cultivate music ; and I think, too, that I 
can now understand what effects tlie human voice 
can produce on human minds, without recurring 
to the art of song.” 


52 


THE PARISIANS. 


“Ah,” said Graham, with a pleased smile, 
“do not make me ashamed of my former rude- 
ness by the revenge of compliment, and, above 
all, do not disparage your own art by supposing 
that any prose effect of voice in its utterance of 
mind can interpret that which music alone can 
express, even to listeners so uncultivated as my- 
self. Am I not told truly by musical composers, 
Avhen I ask them to explain in words what they 
say in their music, that such explanation is im- 
possible, that music has a language of its own 
untranslatable by words ?” 

“Yes,” said Isaura, with thoughtful brow but 
brightening eyes, “you are told truly. It was 
only the other day that I was pondering over 
that truth.” 

“ But what recesses of mind, of heart, of soul, 
this untranslatable language penetrates and 
brightens up ! How incomplete the grand na- 
ture of man — though man the grandest — would 
be, if you struck out of his reason the compre- 
liension of poetry, music, and religion ! In each 
are reached and are sounded deeps in his reason 
otherwise concealed from himself. History, ' 
knowledge, science, stop at the point in which | 
mystery begins. There they meet with the world 
of shadow. Not an inch of that world can they 
penetrate without the aid of poetry and religion, | 
two necessities of intellectual man much more 
nearly allied than the votaries of the practical ' 
and the positive suppose. To the aid and eleva- j 
tion of both those necessities comes in music, ! 
and there has never existed a religion in the 
world which has not demanded music as its ally. ' 
If, as I said frankly, it is only in certain moods 
of my mind that I enjoy music, it is only be- ' 
cause in certain moods of my mind I am capable 
of quitting the guidance of prosaic reason for the 
world of shadow ; that I am so susceptible as at 
every hour, were my nature perfect, I should be 
to the mysterious influences of poetry and re- 
ligion. Do you understand what I wish to ex- 
press ?” 

“Yes, I do, and clearly.” 

“Then, signorina, you are forbidden to un- 
dervalue the gift of song. You must feel its 
power over the heart when you enter the opera- 
house ; over the soul, when you kneel in a ca- 
thedral.” 

“Oh,” cried Isaura, with enthusiasm, a rich 
glow mantling over her lovely face, “ how I 
thank you ! Is it you who say you do not love 
music? How much better you understand it 
than I did till this moment!” 

Here Mrs. Morley, joined by the American 
poet, came to the corner in which the English- 
man and the singer had niched themselves. The ' 
))oet began to talk, the other guests gathered 
round, and every one listened reverentially until 
the party broke up. Colonel Morley handed 
Isaura to her carriage; the she -mountebank 
again fell to the lot of Graham. i 

“Signor,” said she, as he respectfully placed 
her shawl round her scarlet-and-gilt jacket, “are 
we so far from Paris that you can not spare the 
lime to call ? My child does not sing in public, 
but at home you can hear her. It is not every 
woman’s voice that is sweetest at home.” 

Graham bowed, and said he would call on the 
morrow. 

Isaura mused in silent delight over the words 
which had so extolled the art of the singer. 


' Alas, poor child! she could not guess that in 
those words, reconciling her to the profession 
of the stage, the speaker was pleading against 
his own heart. 

I There was in Graham’s nature, as I think it 
commonly is in that of most true orators, a won- 
derful degree of intellectual conscience, which 
impelled him to acknowledge the benignant in- 
fluences of song, and to set before the young 
singer the noblest incentives to the profession to 
which he deemed her assuredly destined. But 
I in so doing he must have felt that he was widen- 
ing the gulf between her life and his own. Per- 
haps he wished to widen it in proportion as he 
dreaded to listen to any voice in his heart which 
asked if the gulf might not be overleaped. 


CHAPTER ir. 

On the morrow Graham called at the villa at 

A . The two ladies received him in Isaura’s 

chosen sitting-room. 

Somehow or other conversation at first lan- 
guished. Graham was reserved and distant, 
Isaura shy and embarrassed. 

The Venosta had the /rais of making talk to 
herself. Probably at another time Graham 
would have been amused and interested in the 
observation of a character new to him, and thor- 
oughly southern — lovable, not more from its 
naive simplicity of kindliness than from various 
little foibles and vanities, all of which were 
harmless, and some of them endearing as those 
of a child whom it is easy to make happy, and 
whom it seems so cruel to pain ; and with all 
the Venosta’s deviations from the polished and 
tranquil good taste of the beau monde, she had 
I that indescribable grace which rarely deserts a 
; Florentine, so that you might call her odd, but 
I not vulgar ; while, though uneducated, except 
in the way of her old profession, and never hav- 
ing troubled herself to read any thing but a li- 
bretto, and the pious books commended to her 
by her confessor, the artless babble of her talk 
every now and then flashed out with a quaint 
humor, lighting up terse fragments of the old 
Italian wisdom which had mysteriously em- 
bedded themselves in the groundwork of her 
mind. 

But Graham was not at this time disposed to 
judge the poor Venosta kindly or fairly. Isaura 
had taken high rank in his thoughts. He felt 
an impatient resentment, mingled with anxiety 
and compassionate tenderness, at a companion- 
ship which seemed to him derogatory to the 
position he would have assigned to a creature 
so gifted, and unsafe as a guide amidst the perils 
and trials to which the youth, the beauty, and 
the destined profession of Isaura were exposed. 
Like most Englishmen — especially Englishmen 
wise in the knowledge of life — he held in fastid- 
ious regard the proprieties and conventions by 
which the dignity of woman is fenced round"; 
and of those proprieties and conventions the 
Venosta naturally appeared to him a very un- 
satisfactory guardian and representative. 

Happily unconscious of those hostile prepos- 
sessions, the elder signora chatted on very gayly 
to the visitor. She was in excellent spirits ; peo- 
ple had been very civil to her both at Colonel 


THE PARISIANS. 


Morley’s and M. Louviev’s. The American 
minister had praised the scarlet jacket. She 
was convinced she had made a sensation two 
nights running. When the amour propre is 
pleased the tongue is freed. 

The Venosta ran on in praise of Paris and the 
Parisians ; of Louvier and his aoir^e, and the 
pistachio ice ; of the Americans, and a certain 
creme de maraschino which she hoped the Signor 
Inglese had not failed to taste. The crhne de 
maraschino led her thoughts back to Italy. Then 
she grew mournful — how she missed the native 
beau del! Paris was pleasant, but how absurd 
to call it “ /e Paradis des Femmes '' — as if les 
Feuwies could find Paradise in a brouiUard! 

“But,” she exclaimed, with vivacity of voice 
and gesticulation, “the signor does not come to 
hear the parrot talk. He is engaged to come 
that he may hear the nightingale sing. A drop 
of honey attracts the fly more than a bottle of 
vinegar.” 

Graham could not help smiling at this adage. 
“I submit,” said he, “to your comparison as 
regards myself ; but certainly any thing less like 
a bottle of vinegar than your amiable conversa- 
tion I can not well conceive. However, the met- 
aphor apart, I scarcely know how I dare ask ma- 
demoiselle to sing after the confession I made to 
her last night.” 

“ What confession?” asked the Venosta. 

“That I know nothing of music, and doubt 
if I can honestly say that I am fond of it.” 

“Not fond of music! Impossible! You 
slander yourself. He who loves not music would 
have a dull time of it in heaven. But you are 
English, and perhaps have only heard the music 
of your own country. Bad, very bad — a here- 
tic’s music! Now listen.” 

Seating herself at the piano, she began an 
air from the Liicia, crying out to Isaura to come 
and sing to her accompaniment. 

“Do you really wish it?” asked Isaura of 
Graham, fixing on him questioning, timid eyes. 

“ I can not say how much I wish to hear you. ” 

Isaura moved to the instrument, and Graham 
stood behind her. Perhaps he felt that he should 
judge more impartially of her voice if not sub- 
jected to the charm of her face. 

But the first note of the voice held him spell- 
bound : in itself, the organ was of the rarest or- 
der, mellow and rich, but so soft that its power 
was lost in its sweetness, and so exquisitely fresh 
in every note. 

But the singer’s charm was less in voice than 
in feeling — she conveyed to the listener so much 
more than was said by the words, or even im- 
plied by the music. Her song in this caught 
the art of the painter who impresses the mind 
with the consciousness of a something which the 
eye can not detect on the canvas. 

She seemed to breathe ont from the depths of 
her heart the intense pathos of the original ro- 
mance, so far exceeding that of the opera — the 
human tenderness, the mystic terror of a tragic 
love-tale more solemn in its sweetness than that 
of Verona. 

When her voice died away no applause came 
— not even a murmur. Isaura bashfully turned 
round to steal a glance at her silent listener, and 
beheld moistened eyes and quivering lips. At 
that moment she w'as reconciled to her art. Gra- 
ham rose abruptly and walked to the window. 


53 

“Do you doubt now if you are foud of mu- 
sic?” cried the Venosta. 

“This is more than music,” answered Gra- 
ham, still with averted face. Then, after a short 
pause, he approached Isaura and said, with a 
melancholy half smile, 

“ I do not think, mademoiselle, that I could 
dare to hear you often ; it would take me too 
far from the hard real world ; and he who would 
not be left behindliand on the road that he must 
journey can not indulge frequent excursions 
into fairy-land.” 

“Yet,” said Isaura, in a tone yet sadder, “I 
was told in my childhood, by one whose genius 
gives authority to her words, that beside the 
real world lies the ideal. The real world then 
seemed rough to me. ‘Escape,’ said my coun- 
selor, ‘is granted from that stony thoroughfare 
into the fields beyond its formal hedge-rows. 
The ideal world has its sorrows, but it never ad- 
mits despair.’ That counsel then, methought, 
decided my choice of life. I know not now if 
it has done so.” 

“Fate,” answered Graham, slowly and 
thoughtfully — “Fate, which is not the ruler but 
the servant of Providence, decides our choice of 
life, and rarely from outward circumstances. 
Usually the motive power is \\ithin. We apply 
the word genius to the minds of the gifted few ; 
but in all of us there is a genius that is inborn, 
a pervading something which distinguishes our 
very identity, and dictates to the conscience that 
which we are best fitted to do and to be. In so 
dictating it compels our choice of life ; or if we 
resist the dictate, we find at the close that we 
have gone astray. My choice of life thus com- 
pelled is on the stony thoroughfares — yours in 
the green fields.” 

As he thus said, his face became clouded and 
mournful. 

The Venosta, quickly tired of a conversation 
in which she had no part, and having various 
little household matters to attend to, had during 
this dialogue slipped unobserved from the room ; 
yet neither Isaura nor Graham felt the sudden 
consciousness that they were alone which be- 
longs to lovers. 

“Why,” asked Isaura, with that magic smile 
reflected in countless dimples which, even when 
her words were those of a man’s reasoning, 
made them .seem gentle with a woman’s senti- 
ment — “ why must your road through the world 
be so exclusively the stony one? It is not from 
necessity — it can not be from taste. And what- 
ever definition you give to genius, surely it is 
not your own inborn genius that dictates to you 
a constant exclusive adherence to the common- 
place of life.” 

“Ah, mademoiselle! do not misrepresent 
me. I did not say that I could not sometimes 
quit the real world for fairy-land — I said that I 
could not do so often. My vocation is not that 
of a poet or artist.” 

“It is that of an orator, I know,” said Isaura, 
kindling — “so they tell me, and I believe them. 
But is not the orator somewhat akin to the poet? 
Is not oratory an art ?” 

“Let us dismiss the word orator; as applied 
to English public lif^, it is a very deceptive ex- 
pression. The Englishman who wishes to influ- 
ence his countrymen by force of words spoken 
must mix with them in their beaten thorough-* 


THE PARISIANS. 


r)4 

fares ; must make himself master of their prac- 
tical views and interests ; must be conversant 
with their prosaic occupations and business ; 
must understand how to adjust their loftiest as- 
pirations to their material welfare ; must avoid, 
as the fault most dangerous to himself and to 
others, that kind of eloquence which is called 
oratory in Prance, and which has helped to 
make the French the worst politicians in Eu- 
rope. Alas, mademoiselle ! 1 fear that an En- 
glish statesman would appear to you a very dull 
orator.” 

“I see that I spoke foolishly — yes, you show 
me that the world of the statesman lies apart 
from that of the artist. Yet — ” 

“ Yet what ?” 

“ May not the ambition of both be the same ?” 

“ How so ?” 

“To refine the rude, to exalt the mean — to 
identify their own fame with some new beauty, 
some new glory, added to the treasure-house of 
all.” 

Graham bowed his head reverently, and then 
raised it with the flush of enthusiasm on his 
cheek and brow. 

“Oh, mademoiselle!” he exclaimed, “what 
a sure guide and what a noble inspii er to a true 
Englishman's ambition nature has fitted you to 
be, were it not — ” He paused abruptly. 

This outburst took Isaura utterly by surprise. 
She had been accustomed to the language of 
compliment till it had begun to pall, but a com- 
])liment of this kind was the first that had ever 
reached her ear. She had no words in answer 
to it ; involuntarily she placed her hand on her 
heart, as if to still its beatings. But the unfin- 
ished exclamation, “ Were it not,” troubled her 
more than the preceding words had flattered, 
and mechanically she murmured, “Were it not 
— what ?” 

“Oh,” answered Graham, affecting a tone of 
gayety, “I felt too ashamed of my selfishness 
as man to finish my sentence. ” 

“ Do so, or I shall fancy you refrained lest 
you might wound me as woman.” 

“Not so — on the contrary ; had I gone on, it 
would have been to say that a woman of your 
genius, and more especially of such mastery in 
the most popular and fascinating of all arts, 
could not be contented if she inspired nobler 
thoughts in a single breast — she must belong to 
the public, or rather the public must belong to 
her : it is but a corner of her heart that an in- 
dividual can occupy, and even that individual 
must merge his existence in hers — must be con- 
tented to reflect a ray of the light she sheds on 
admiring thousands. Who could dare to say 
to you, ‘Renounce your career — confine your 
genius, your art, to the petty circle of home?’ 
To an actress — a singer — with whose fame the 
world rings, home would be a prison. Pardon 
me, pardon — ” 

Isaura had turned away her face to hide tears 
that would force their way, but she held out her 
hand to him with a child-like frankness, and said, 
softly, “I am not offended.” Graham did not 
trust himself to continue the same strain of con- 
A’ersation. Breaking into a new subject, he said, 
after a constrained pause, “Will you think it 
very impertinent in so new an acquaintance if I 
ask how it is that you, an Italian, know our 
language as a native, and is it by Italian teach- 


ers that you have been trained to think and to 
feel ?” 

“Mr. Selby, my second father, was an En- 
glishman, and did not speak any other language 
with comfort to himself He was very fond of 
me, and had he been really my fathfer 1 could 
not have loved him more. We were constant 
companions till — till I lost him.” 

“And no mother left to console you.” Isaura 
shook her head mournfully, and the Venosta here 
re-entered. 

Graham felt conscious that he had already 
staid too long, and took leave. 

They knew that they were to meet that even- 
ing at the Savarins’. 

Graham did not feel unmixed pleasure at that 
thought : the more he knew of Isaura, the more 
he felt self-reproach that he had allowed himself 
to know her at all. 

But after he had left Isaura sang low to her- 
self the song which had so affected her listener ; 
then she fell into abstracted reverie, but she felt 
a strange and new sort of happiness. In dress- 
ing for M. Savarin’s dinner, and twining the 
classic ivy wreath into her dark locks, her Ital- 
ian servant exclaimed, “ How beautiful the sign- 
orina looks to-night !” 


CHAPTER III. 

M. Savarin was one of the most brilliant 
of that galaxy of literary men which shed lustre 
on the reign of Louis Philippe. 

His was an intellect peculiarly French in its 
lightness and grace. Neither England, nor Ger- 
many, nor America has produced any resemblance 
to it. Ireland has, in Thomas Moore ; but then 
in Irish genius there is so much that is French. 

M. Savarin was free from the ostentatious ex- 
travagance which had come into vogue with the 
empire. His house and establishment were mod- 
estly maintained within the limit of an income 
chiefly, perhaps entirely, derived from literary 
profits. 

Though he gave frequent dinners, it was but 
to few at a time, and without show or pretense. 
Yet the dinners, though simple, were perfect of 
their kind ; and the host so contrived to infuse 
his own playful gayety into the temper of his 
guests that the feasts at his house were considered 
the pleasantest at Paris. On this occasion the 
party extended to ten, the largest number his 
table admitted. 

All the French guests belonged to the Liberal 
party, though in changing tints of the tricolor. 
Place aux dames, first to be named were the 
Countess de Craon and Madame Vertot — both 
without husbands. The Countess had buried 
the Count, Madame Vertot had separated from 
monsieur. The Countess was very handsome, 
but she was sixty. Madame Vertot was twenty 
years younger, but she was very plain. She had 
quarreled with the distinguished author for whose 
sake she had separated from monsieur, and no 
man had since presumed to think that he could 
console a lady so plain for the loss of an author 
so distinguished. 

Both these ladies were very clever. The Count- 
ess had written lyrical poems entitled Cries of 
Liberty, and a drama of which Danton was the 


THE PARISIANS. 


oo 


hero, and the moral too revolutionary for admis- 
sion to the stage ; but at heart the Countess was 
not at all a revolutionist — the last person in the 
world to do or desire any thing that could bring 
a washer-woman an inch nearer to a countess. 
She was one of those persons who play with fire 
in order to appear enlightened. 

Madame Vertot was of severer mould. She 
had knelt at the feet of M. Thiers, and went 
into the historico-political line. She had written 
a remarkable book upon the modern Carthage 
(meaning England), and more recently a work 
that had excited much attention upon the Bal- 
ance of Power, in which she proved it to be the 
interest of civilization and the necessity of Eu- 
rope that Belgium should be added to Prance, 
and Prussia circumscribed to the bounds of its 
original margravate. She showed how easily 
these two objects could have been effected by a 
constitutional monarch instead of an egotistical 
emperor. Madame Vertot was a decided Or- 
leanist. 

Both these ladies condescended to put aside 
authorship in general society. Next among our 
guests let me place the Count de Passy and 
Madame son epouse. The Count was seventy- 
one, and, it is needless to add, a type of French- 
man rapidly vanishing, and not likely to find it- 
self renewed. How shall I describe him so as 
to make my English reader understand? Let 
me try by analogy. Suppose a man of great 
birth and fortune, who in his youth had been an 
enthusiastic friend of Lord Byron and a jocund 
companion of George IV. — who had in him an 
immense degree of lofty romantic sentiment with 
an equal degree of well-bred worldly cynicism, 
but who, on account of that admixture, which 
is rare, kept a high rank in either of the two 
societies into which, speaking broadly, civilized 
life divides itself — the romantic and the cynical. 
The Count de Passy had been the most ardent 
among the young disciples of Chateaubriand — 
the most brilliant among the young courtiers of 
Charles X. Need I add that he had been a ter- 
rible lady-killer? 

But in spite of his admiration of Chateau- 
briand and his allegiance to Charles X., the 
Count had been always true to those caprices 
of the French noblesse from which he descended 
— caprices which destroyed them in the old Rev- 
olution — caprices belonging to the splendid ig- 
norance of their nation in general, and their 
order in particular. Speaking without regard 
to partial exceptions, the French gentilhomme is 
essentially a Parisian ; a Parisian is essentially 
impressionable to the impulse or fashion of the 
moment. Is it a la mode for the moment to be 
Liberal or anti-Liberal ? Parisians embrace and 
kiss each other, and swear through life and death 
to adhere forever to the mode of the moment. 
The Three Days were the mode of the moment — 
the Count de Passy became an enthusiastic Or- 
leanist. Louis Philippe was very gracious to 
him. He was decorated ; he was named prefet 
of his department ; he was created senator ; he 
was about to be sent minister to a German court 
when Louis Philippe fell. The republic was 
])roclaimed. The Count caught the populai- con- 
tagion, and after exchanging tears and kisses 
with patriots whom a week before he had called 
canaille, he swore eternal fidelity to the republic. 
The fashion of the moment suddenly became 


Napoleonic, and with the coup d'etat the republic 
was metamorphosed into an empire. The Count 
wept on the bosoms of all the Vieilles Moustaches 
he could find, and rejoiced that the sun of Aus- 
terlitz had rearisen. But after the affair of 
Mexico the sun of Austerlitz waxed very sickly. 
Imperialism was fast going out of fashion. The 
Count transferred his affection to Jules Favre, 
and joined the ranks of the advanced Liberals. 
During ail these political changes the Count had 
remained very much the same man in private 
life — agreeable, good-natured, witty, and, above 
all, a devotee of the fair sex. When he had 
reached the age of sixty-eight he was still forte 
hel homme — unmarried, with a grand presence 
and charming manner. At that age he said, 
“.Tie me range," and married a young lady of 
eighteen. 8he adored her husband, and was 
wildly jealous of him, while the Count did not 
seem at all jealous of her, and submitted to her 
adoration with a gentle shrug of the shoulders. 

The three other guests who, with Graham and 
the two Italian ladies, made up the complement 
of ten, were the German Count von Rudesheim, 
whom Vane had met at M. Louvier’s, a cele- 
brated French physician named Bacourt, and a 
young author whom Savarin had admitted into 
his clique and declared to be of rare prom- 
ise. This author, whose real name was Gustave 
Rameau, but who, to prove, I suppose, the sin- 
cerity of that scorn for ancestry which he pro- 
fessed, published his verses under the patrician 
designation of Alphonse de Valcour, was about 
twenty-four, and might have passed at the first 
glance for younger; but, looking at him closely, 
the signs of old age were already stamped on his 
visage. 

He was undersized, and of a feeble, slender 
frame. In the eyes of women and artists the de- 
fects of his frame were redeemed by the extraor- 
dinary beauty of the face. His black hair, care- 
fully parted in the centre, and worn long and 
flowing, contrasted the whiteness of a high 
though narrow forehead and the delicate pallor 
of his cheeks. His features were very regular, 
his eyes singularly bright ; but the expression of 
the face spoke of fatigue and exhaustion ; the 
silky locks were already thin, and interspersed 
with threads of silver ; the bright eyes shone out 
from sunken orbits ; the lines round the mouth 
were marked as they are in the middle age of 
one who has lived too fast. 

It was a countenance that might have excited 
a compassionate and tender interest but for 
something arrogant and supercilious in the ex- 
pression — something that demanded not tender 
pity, but enthusiastic admiration. Yet that ex- 
pression was displeasing rather to men than to 
women ; and one could well conceive that among 
the latter the enthusiastic admiration it chal- 
lenged would be largely conceded. 

The conversation at dinner was in complete 
contrast to that at the American’s the day be- 
fore. There the talk, though animated, had 
been chiefly earnest and serious — here it was all 
touch and go, sally and repartee. The subjects 
were the light on dits and lively anecdotes of the 
day, not free from literature and politics, but 
both treated as matters of persiflage, hovered 
round with a jest, and quitted with an epigram. 
The two French lady authors, the Count de Pas- 
sy, the physician, and the host far outshone all 


56 


THE PARISIANS. 


the other guests. Now and then, however, the 
German count struck in with an ironical remark 
condensing a great deal of grave wisdom, and 
the young author with ruder and more biting 
sarcasm. If the sarcasm told, he showed his 
triumph by a low-pitched laugh ; if it failed, he 
evinced his displeasure by a contemptuous sneer 
or a grim scowl. 

Isaura and Graham were not seated near each 
other, and were for the most part contented to 
be listeners. 

On adjourning to the salon after dinner Gra- 
ham, however, was approaching the chair in 
which Isaura had placed herself, when the young 
author, forestalling him, dropped into the seat 
next to her, and began a conversation in a voice 
so low that it might have passed for a whisper. 
The Englishman drew back and observed them. 
He soon perceived, with a pang of jealousy not 
unmingled with scorn, that the author’s talk ap- 
peared to interest Isaura. She listened with ev- 
ident attention ; and when she spoke in return, 
though Graham did not hear her words, he could 
observe on her expressive countenance an in- 
creased gentleness of aspect. 

“ I hope,” said the physician, joining Graham, 
as most of the other guests gathered around Sa- 
varin, who was in his liveliest vein of anecdote 
and wit — “I hope that the fair Italian will not 
allow that ink-bottle imp to persuade her that 
she has fallen in love with him.” 

“Do young ladies generally find him so se- 
ductive ?” asked Graham, with a forced smile. 

“Probably enough. He has the reputation 
of being very clever and very wicked, and that 
is a sort of character which has the serpent’s 
fascination for the daughters of Eve.” 

“ Is the reputation merited ?” 

“As to the cleverness I am not a fair judge. 
I dislike that sort of writing which is neither 
manlike nor womanlike, and in which young 
Rameau excels. He has the knack of finding 
very exaggerated phrases by which to express 
commonplace thoughts. He writes verses about 
love in words so stormy that you might fancy 
that Jove was descending upon Semele. But 
when you examine his words, as a sober pathol- 
ogist like myself is disposed to do, your fear for 
the peace of households vanishes — they are ‘ Vox 
et prceterea nihiV — no man really in love would 
use them. He writes prose about the wrongs of 
humanity. You feel for humanity. You say, 

‘ Grant the wrongs, now for the remedy,’ and 
you find nothing but balderdash. Still I am 
bound to say that both in verse and prose Gus- 
tave Rameau is in unison with a corrupt taste 
of the day, and therefore he is coming into vogue. 
So much as to his writings. As to his wicked- 
^ness, you have only to look at him to feel sure 
that he is not a hundredth part so wicked as he 
wishes to seem. In a word, then. Monsieur Gus- 
tave Rameau is a type of that somewhat numer- 
ous class among the youth of Paris which I call 
‘the Lost Tribe of Absinthe.’ There is a set of 
men who begin to live full gallop while they are 
still boys. As a general rule, they are original- 
ly of the sickly frames which can scarceW even 
trot, much less gallop, without the spur of stim- 
ulants, and no stimulant so fascinates their pe- 
culiar nervous system as absinthe. The number 
of patients in this set who at the age of thirty 
are more worn out than septuagenarians increases 


so rapidly as to make one dread to think what 
will be the next race of Frenchmen. To the 
predilection for absinthe young Rameau and the 
writers of his set add the imitation of Heine, 
after, indeed, the manner of caricaturists, who 
effect a likeness striking in proportion as it is 
ugly. It is not easy to imitate the pathos and 
the wit of Heine, but it is easy to imitate his de- 
fiance of the Deity, his mockery of right and 
wrong, his relentless war on that heroic stand- 
ard of thought and action which the writers who 
exalt their nation intuitively preserve. Rameau 
can not be a Heine, but he can be to Heine what 
a misshapen snarling dwarf is to a mangled blas- 
pheming Titan. Yet he interests the women in 
general, and he evidently interests the fair sign- 
orina in especial.” 

Just as Bacourt finished that last sentence 
Isaura lifted the head which had hitherto bent 
in an earnest listening attitude that seemed to 
justify the doctor’s remarks, and looked round. 
Her eyes met Graham’s with the fearless candor 
which made half the charm of their bright yet 
soft intelligence. But she dropped them sud- 
denly with a half start and a change of color, for 
the expression of Graham’s face was unlike that 
which she had hitherto seen on it — it was hard, 
stern, somewhat disdainful. A minute or so 
afterward she rose, and in passing across the 
room toward the group round the host, paused 
at a table covered with books and prints near to 
which Graham was standing — alone. The doc- 
tor had departed in company with the German 
count. 

Isaura took up one of the prints. 

“Ah!” she exclaimed, “Sorrento — my Sor- 
rento! Have you ever visited Sorrento, Mr. 
Vane?” 

Her question and her movement were evident- 
ly in conciliation. Was the conciliation prompt- 
ed by coquetry, or by a sentiment more innocent 
and artless ? 

Graham doubted, and replied, coldly, as he 
bent over the print, 

“I once staid there a few days, but my rec- 
ollection of it is not sufficiently lively to enable 
me to recognize its features in this design.” 

“That is the house, at least so they say, of 
Tasso’s father ; of course you visited that ?” 

“Yes, it was a hotel in my time; I lodged 
there. ” 

“ And I, too. There I first read The Geru- 
salemme." The last words were said in Italian, 
with a low measured tone, inwardly and dreamily. 

A somewhat sharp and incisive voice speaking 
in French here struck in and prevented Graham’s 
rejoinder: '‘‘‘Quel joli dessin! What is it, ma- 
demoiselle ?” 

Graham recoiled : the speaker was Gustave 
Rameau, who had, unobserved, first watched 
Isaura, then rejoined her side. 

“A view of Sorrento, monsieur; but it does 
not do justice to the place. I was pointing out 
the house which belonged to Tasso’s father.” 

“Tasso! Hein! and which is the fair Eleo- 
nora’s ?” 

“ Monsieur,” answered Isaura, rather startled 
at that question from a professed homme de let- 
tres, “Eleonora did not live at Sorrento.” 

“ Tant pis pour Sorrente," said the homme de 
lettres, carelessly. “No one would care for 
Tasso if it were not for Eleonora.” 








( 


. -ly -X'’-r‘ V 


. r/. ■ >, / 1. * 






. N 




THE PARISIANS. 


“ I should rather have thought,” said Graham, 
“that no one would have cared for Eleonora if 
it were not for Tasso.” 

Rameau glanced at the Englishman supercili- 
ously. 

‘ ‘ Pardon^ monsieur^ in every age a love-story 
keeps its interest; but who cares nowadays for 
le clinqimnt dxi Tasse?" 

“Ze clinquant du Tasse!" exclaimed Isaura, 
indignantly. 

“The expression is Boileau’s, mademoiselle, 
in ridicule of the '’Sot de qualite,’ who prefers 

‘Le clinquant du Tasse d tout Vor de Virgile.' 

But for my part, I have as little faith in the last 
as the first.” 

“I do not know Latin, and have therefore 
not read Virgil,” said Isaura. 

“Possibly,” remarked Graham, “monsieur 
does not know Italian, and has therefore not 
read Tasso.” 

“ If that be meant in sarcasm,” retorted Ra- 
meau, “I construe it as a compliment. A 
Frenchman who is contented to study the mas- 
terpieces of modern literature need learn no lan- 
guage and read no authors but his own.” 

Isaura laughed her pleasant silvery laugh. “ I 
should admire the frankness of that boast, mon- 
sieur, if in our talk just now you had not spoken 
as contemptuously of what we are accustomed to 
consider French masterpieces as you have done 
of Virgil and Tasso.” 

“ Ah, mademoiselle! it is not my fault if you 
have had teachers of taste so rococo as to bid 
you find masterpieces in the tiresome stilted 
tragedies of Corneille and Racine. Poetry of a 
court, not of a people — one simple novel, one 
simple stanza that probes the hidden recesses of 
the human heart, reveals the sores of this wretch- 
ed social state, denounces the evils of supersti- 
tion, kingcraft, and priestcraft — is worth a li- 
brary of the rubbish which pedagogues call ‘ the 
classics.’ We agree, at least, in one thing, ma- 
demoiselle — we both do homage to the genius of 
your friend, Madame de Grantrnesnil.” 

“Your friend, signorina!” cried Graham, in- 
credulously; “is Madame de Grantrnesnil your 
friend ?” 

“ The dearest I have in the world.” 

Graham’s face darkened ; he turned away in 
silence, and in another minute vanished from 
the room, persuading himself that he felt not 
one pang of jealousy in leaving Gustave Ra- 
meau by the side of Isaura. “Her dearest 
friend, Madame de Grantrnesnil!” he muttered. 

A word now on Isaura’s chief correspondent. 
Madame de Grantrnesnil was a woman of noble 
birth and ample fortune. She had separated 
from her husband in the second year after mar- 
riage. She was a singularly eloquent writer, 
surpassed among contemporaries of her sex in 
popularity and renown only by George Sand. 

At least as fearless as that great novelist in the 
frank exposition of her views, she had com- 
menced her career in letters by a w^ork of aston- 
ishing power and pathos, directed against the 
institution of marriage as regulated in Roman 
Catholic communities. I do not know that it 
said more on this delicate subject than the En- 
glish Milton has said ; but then Milton did not 
write for a Roman Catholic community, nor 
adopt a style likely to captivate the working 


classes. Madame de Grantmesnil’s first book 
was deemed an attack on the religion of the 
country, and captivated those among the work- 
ing classes who had already abjured that relig- 
ion. This work was followed up by others more 
or less in defiance of “ received opinions ;” some 
with political, some with social revolutionary 
aim and tendency, but always with a singular 
jurity of style. Search all her books, and how- 
ever you might revolt from her doctrine, you 
could not find a hazardous expression. The 
novels of English young ladies are naughty in 
comparison. Of late years whatever might be 
lard or audacious in her political or social doc- 
trines softened itself into charm amidst the 
golden haze of romance. Her writings had 
grown more and more purely artistic — poetizing 
what is good and beautiful in the realities of life 
rather than creating a false ideal out of what is 
vicious and deformed. Such a woman, separated 
young from her husband, could not enunciate 
such opinions and lead a life so independent and 
uncontrolled as Madame de Grantrnesnil had 
done without scandal, without calumny. Noth- 
ing, however, in her actual life had ever been so 
proved against her as to lower the high position 
she occupied in right of birth, fortune, renown. 
Wherever she went she was fetde — as in En- 
gland foreign princes, and in America foreign 
authors, are fet^s. Those who knew her well 
concurred in praise of her lofty, generous, lov- 
able qualities. Madame de Grantrnesnil had 
known Mr. Selby ; and when at his death Isaura, 
in the innocent age between childhood and youth, 
had been left the most sorrowful and most lonely 
creature on the face of the earth, this famous 
woman, worshiped by the rich for her intellect, 
adored by the poor for her beneficence, came to 
the orphan’s friendless side, breathing love once 
more into her pining heart, and waking for the 
first time the desires of genius, the aspirations 
of art, in the dim self-consciousness of a soul 
between sleep and waking. 

But, my dear Englishman, put yourself in 
Graham’s place, and suppose that you were be- 
ginning to fall in love with a girl whom for many 
good reasons you ought not to marry ; suppose 
that in the same hour in Avhich you were angrily 
conscious of jealousy on account of a man whom 
it wounds your self-esteem to consider a rival, 
the girl tells you that her dearest friend is a 
woman who is filmed for her hostility to the in- 
stitution of marriage ! 

♦ 

CHAPTER IV. 

On the same day in which Graham dined with 
the Savarins, M. Louvier assembled round his 
table the dite of the young Parisians who con- 
stitute the oligarchy of fashion, to meet whom he 
had invited his new friend the Marquis de Roche- 
briant. Most of them belonged to the Legitimist 
party — the noblesse of the faubourg ; those who 
did not, belonged to no political party at all — in- 
different to the cares of mortal states as the gods 
of Epicurus. Foremost among ihxajeunesse dord 
were Alain’s kinsmen, Raoul and Enguerrand de 
Vandemar. To these Louvier introduced him 
with a burly parental bonhomie, as if he were the 
head of the family. ‘ ‘ I need not bid you, young 


58 


THE PARISIANS. 


folks, to make friends with each other. A Van- 
demar and a Rochebriant are not made friends — 
they are born friends.” So saying he turned to 
his other guests. 

Almost in an instant Alain felt his constraint 
melt away in the cordial warmth with which his 
cousins greeted him. 

These young men had a striking family like- 
ness to each other, and yet in feature, coloring, 
and expression, in all save that strange family 
likeness, they were contrasts. 

Raoul was tall, and though inclined to be slen- 
der, with sufficient breadth of shoulder to indi- 
cate no inconsiderable strength of frame. His 
hair worn short, and his silky beard worn long, 
were dark, so were his eyes, shaded by curved 
drooping eyelashes ; his complexion was pale, 
but clear and healthful. In repose the expres- 
sion of his face was that of a somewhat mel- 
ancholy indolence, but in speaking it became 
singularly sweet, with a smile of the exquisite 
urbanity which no artificial politeness can be- 
stow: it must emanate from that native high 
breeding which has its source in goodness of 
heart. 

Enguerrand was fair, with curly locks of gold- 
en chestnut. He wore no beard, only a small 
mustache, rather darker than his hair. His 
complexion might in itself be called efieminate, 
its bloom was so fresh and delicate, but there 
was so much of boldness and energy in the play 
of his countenance, the hardy outline of the lips, 
and the open breadth of the forehead, that “ef- 
feminate” was an epithet no one ever assigned to 
his aspect. He was somewhat under the middle 
height, but beautifully proportioned, carried him- 
self well, and somehow or other did not look 
short even by the side of tall men. Altogether 
he seemed formed to be a mother’s darling, and 
spoiled by women, yet to hold his own among 
men with a strength of will more evident in his 
look and his bearing than it was in those of his 
graver and statelier brother. 

Both were considered by their young coeqnals 
models in dress, but in Raoul there was no sign 
that care or thought upon dress had been be- 
stowed ; the simplicity of his costume was abso- 
lute and severe. On his plain shirt-front there 
gleamed not a stud, on his fingers there sparkled 
not a ring. Enguerrand, on the contrary, was 
not without pretension in his attire ; the broderie 
in his shirt-front seemed woven by the queen of 
the fairies. His rings of turquoise and opal, his 
studs and wrist buttons of pearl and brilliants, 
must have cost double the rental of Rochebriant, 
but probably they cost him nothing. He was one 
of those hapj)y Lotharios to whom Calistas make 
constant presents. All about him was so bright 
that the atmosphere around seemed gayer for his 
presence. 

In one respect, at least, the brothers closely 
resembled each other — in that exquisite gracious- 
ness of manner for which the genuine French no- 
ble is traditionally renowned — a graciousness that 
did not desert them even when they came reluc- 
tantly into contact with roturiers or republicans ; 
but the graciousness became €galite^ fraternite 
toward one of their caste and kindred. 

“We must do our best to make Paris pleasant 
to you,” said Raoul, still retaining in his grasp 
the hand he had taken. 

“ Vilain cousin,” said the livelier Enguerrand, 


“ to have been in Paris twenty-four hours, and 
without letting us know.” 

“ Has not your father told you that I called 
upon him ?” 

“Our father,” answered Raoul, “was not so 
savage as to conceal that fact, but he said you 
were only here on business for a day or two, had 
declined his invitation, and would nOt give your 
address. Pauvre j>ere! we scolded him well for 
letting you escape from us thus. My mother has 
not forgiven him yet ; we must present you to 
her to-morrow. I answer for your liking her al- 
most as much as she will like you.” 

Before Alain could answer dinner was an- 
nounced. Alain's place at dinner was between 
his cousins. How pleasant they made them- 
selves ! It was the first time in which Alain had 
been brought into such familiar conversation with 
countrymen of his own rank as well as his own 
age. His heart warmed to them. The general 
talk of the other guests was strange to his ear ; 
it ran much upon horses and races, upon the 
opera and the ballet ; it was enlivened with sa- 
tirical anecdotes of persons whose names were 
unknown to the provincial — not a word was said 
that showed the smallest interest in politics or 
the slightest acquaintance with literatui'e. The 
world of these well-born guests seemed one from 
which all that concerned the great mass of man- 
kind was excluded, yet the talk was that which 
could only be found in a very polished society ; 
in it there was not much wit, but there was a 
prevalent vein of gayety, and the gayety was nev- 
er violent, the laughter was never loud ; the scan- 
dals circulated might imply cynicism the most 
absolute, but in language the most refined. The 
Jockey Club of Paris has its perfume. 

Raoul did not mix in the general conversation ; 
he devoted himself pointedly to the amusement 
of his cousin, explaining to him the point of the 
anecdotes circulated, or hitting off in terse sen- 
tences the characters of the talkers. 

Enguerrand was evidently of temper more vi- 
vacious than his brother, and contributed freely 
to the current play of light gossip and mirthful 
sally. 

Louvier, seated between a duke and a Russian 
prince, said little, except to recommend a wine 
or an entree, but kept his eye constantly on the 
Vandemars and Alain. 

Immediately after coffee the guests departed. 
Before they did so, however, Raoul introduced 
his cousin to those of the party most distinguished 
by hereditary rank or social position. With these 
the name of Rochebriant was too historically fa- 
mous not to insure respect of its owner ; they 
welcomed him among them as if he were their 
brother. 

The French duke claimed him as a connection 
by an alliance in the fourteenth century ; the 
Russian prince had known the late Marquis, 
and “trusted that the son would allow him to 
improve into friendship the acquaintance he had 
formed with the father.” 

Those ceremonials over, Raoul linked his arm 
in Alain’s, and said, “ I am not going to release 
you so soon after we have caught you. You must 
come with me to a house in which 1, at least, spend 
an hour or two every evening. I am at home 
there. Bah ! I take no refusal. Do not suppose 
I carry you off to Bohemia, a country which, I 
am sorry to say, Enguerrand now and then vis- 


THE PAKISIANS. 


59 


its, but which is to me as unknow'n as the mount- 
ains of the moon. The house I speak of is cotnme 
il faut to the utmost. It is that of the Contessa 
di liimini — a charming Italian by marriage, but 
by birth and in character French — bout 
des angles. My mother adores her.” 

That dinner at M. Louvier’s had already effect- 
ed a great change in the mood and temper of 
Alain de Rochebriant ; he felt, as if by magic, 
the sense of youth, of rank, of station, which had 
been so suddenly checked and stifled, warmed to 
life within his veins. He should have deemed 
himself a boor had he refused the invitation so 
frankly tendered. But on reaching the coup€ 
which the brothers kept in common, and seeing 
it only held two, he drew back. 

“Nay, enter, mon cher” said Raoul, divining 
the cause of ]iis hesitation; “Enguerrand has 
gone on to his club.” 

♦ 

CHAPTER V. 

“Tell me,” said Raoul, when they were in 
the carriage, “how you came to know M. Lou- 
vier ?” 

“ He is my chief mortgagee.” 

“H’m! that explains it. But you might be 
in w orse hands ; the man has a character for 
liberality. ” 

“ Did your father mention to you my circum- 
stances, and the reason that brings me to Paris ?” 

“Since you put the question point-blank, my 
dear cousin, he did.” 

“He told you how poor I am, and how keen 
must be my life-long struggle to keep Rochebri- 
ant as the home of my race.” 

“He told us all that could make us still more 
respect the Marquis de Rochebriant, and still 
more eagerly long to know our cousin and the 
head of our house,” answered Raoul, with a cer- 
tain nobleness of tone and manner. 

Alain pressed his kinsman’s hand with grate- 
ful emotion. 

“Yet,” he said, falteringly, “your father 
agreed w’ith me that my circumstances would 
not allow me to — ” 

“Bah!” interrupted Raoul, with a gentle 
laugh ; “ my father is a very clever man, doubt- 
less, but he knows only the world of his own day, 
nothing of the world of ours. I and Enguerrand 
wdll call on you to-morrow, to take you to my 
mother, and before doing so to consult as to af- 
fairs in general. On this last matter Enguerrand 
is an oracle. Here w^e are at the Contessa’s.” 


CHAPTER VI. 

The Contessa di Rimini received her visitors 
in a boudoir furnished with much apparent sim- 
plicity, but a simplicity by no means inexpensive. 
The draperies were but of chintz, and the walls 
covered with the same material, a lively pattern, 
in which the prevalent tints were rose-color and 
w'hite ; but the ornaments on the mantel-piece, 
the china stored in the cabinets or arranged in 
the shelves, the small knickknacks scattered on 
the tables, were costly rarities of art. 

The Contessa herself was a woman who bad 


somewhat passed her thirtieth year, not striking- 
ly handsome, but exquisitely pretty. “There 
is,” said a great French writer, “only one way 
in which a woman can be handsome, but a hun- 
dred thousand ways in which she can be pretty ;” 
and it would be im})ossible to reckon up the num- 
ber of ways in which Adeline di Rimini carried 
otF the prize in prettiness. 

Yet it would be unjust to the personal attrac- 
tions of the Contessa to class them all under the 
word “prettiness.” When regarded more at- 
tentively, there was an expression in her counte- 
nance that might almost be called divine, it spoke 
so unmistakably of a sweet nature and an un- 
troubled soul. An English poet once described 
her by repeating the old lines : 

“ Her face is like the Milky Way i’ the sky— 

A meeting of gentle lights without a name.” 

She was not alone ; an elderly lady sat on an 
arm-chair by the fire engaged in knitting, and a 
man, also elderly, and whose dress proclaimed 
him an ecclesiastic, sat at the opposite corner, 
with a large Angora cat on his lap. 

“I present to you, madame,” said Raoul, 
“my new-found cousin, the seventeenth Mar- 
quis de Rochebriant, whom I am proud to con- 
sider, on the male side, the head of our house, 
representing its eldest branch : welcome him for 
my sake — in future he will be welcome for his 
own.” 

The Contessa replied very graciously to this 
introduction, and made room for Alain on the 
divan from which she had risen. 

The old lady looked up from her knitting, the 
ecclesiastic removed the cat from his lap. , Said 
the old lady, “I announce myself to M. le 
Marquis ; I knew his mother well enough to be 
invited to his christening ; otherwise I have no 
pretension to the acquaintance of a cavalier si 
beau, being old — rather deaf — very stupid — ex- 
ceedingly poor — ” 

“ And,” interrupted Raoul, “the woman in 
all Paris the most adored for bonte, and con- 
sulted for savoir vivre by the young cavaliers 
whom she deigns to receive. Alain, I present 
you to Madame de Maury, the widow of a dis- 
tinguished author and academician, and the 
daughter of the brave Henri de Gerval, who 
fought for the good cause in La Vendee. I pre- 
sent you also to the Abbe Vertpre, who has 
passed his life in the vain endeavor to make oth- 
I er men as good as himself.” 

I “Base flatterer!” said the Abbe, pinching 
Raoul’s ear with one hand, while he extended 
the other to Alain. “Do not let your cousin 
frighten you from knowing me, M. le Marquis. 
When he was my pupil he so convinced me of 
the incorrigibility of perverse human nature 
that I now chiefly address myself to the moral 
improvement of the brute creation. Ask the 
Contessa if I have not achieved a beaii succes 
with her Angora cat. Three months ago that 
creature had the two worst propensities of man. 
He was at once savage and mean ; he bit, he stole. 
Does he ever bite now ? No. Does he ever 
steal? No. Why? I have awakened in that 
cat the dormant conscience, and that done, the 
conscience regulates his actions : once made 
aware of the difference between wrong and right, 
the cat maintains it unswervingly, as if it were a 
law of nature. But if, with prodigious labor, 


60 


THE PAKISIAXS. 


one does awaken conscience in a human sinner, 
it has no steady effect on his conduct — he con- 
tinues to sin all the same. Mankind at Paris, 
Monsieur le Marquis, is divided between two 
classes — one bites and the other steals : shun 
both ; devote yourself to cats. ” 

The Abbe delivered his oration with a gravity 
of mien and tone wliich made it difficult to guess 
whether he spoke in sport or in earnest — in sim- 
ple playfulness or in latent sarcasm. 

But on the brow and in the eye of the priest 
there was a general expression of quiet benevo- 
lence, which made Alain incline to the belief 
that he was only speaking as a pleasant humor- 
ist ; and the Marquis replied, gayly, 

“ Monsieur I’Abbe, admitting the supeiior 
virtue of cats, when taught by so intelligent a 
preceptor, still the business of human life is not 
transacted by cats ; and since men must deal 
with men, permit me, as a preliminary caution, 
to inquire in which class I must rank yourself. 
Do you bite, or do you steal ?” 

This sally, which showed that the Marquis 
was already shaking off his provincial reserve, 
met with great success. 

Raoul and the Contessa laughed merrily ; 
Madame de Maury clapped her hands, and cried, 
“ Bien 

The Abbe replied, with unmoved gravity, 
“Both. I am a priest; it is my duty to bite 
the bad and steal from the good, as you will 
see, M. le Marquis, if you will glance at this 
paper.” 

Here he handed to Alain a memorial on be- 
half of an afflicted family who had been burned 
out of their home, and reduced from compara- 
tive ease to absolute w^ant. There was a list 
appended of some twenty subscribers, the last 
being the Contessa, fifty francs, and Madame 
de Maui-y, five. 

“Allow me. Marquis,” said the Abbe, “to 
steal from you ; bless you twofold, mon Jils !” 
(taking the napoleon Alain extended to him) — 
“ first, for your charity ; secondly, for the effect 
of its example upon the heart of your cousin. 
Raoul de Vandemar, stand and deliver. Bah ! 
— what! only ten francs.” 

Raoul made a sign to the Abbe, unperceived 
by the rest, as he answered, “Abbe, I should 
excel your expectations of my career if I always 
continue worth half as much as my cousin.” 

Alain felt to the bottom of his heart the deli- 
cate tact of his richer kinsman in giving less 
than himself, and the Abbe replied, “Niggard, 
you are pardoned. Humility is a more difficult 
virtue to produce than charity, and in your case 
an instance of it is so rare that it merits encour- 
agement.” 

The “ tea equipage” was now served in what 
at Paris is called the English fashion ; the Con- 
tessa presided over it, the guests gathered round 
the table, and the evening passed away in the in- 
nocent gayety of a domestic circle. The talk, 
if not especially intellectual, was, at least, not 
fashionable — books were not discussed, neither 
were scandals; yet somehow or other it was 
cheery and animated, like that of a happy fami- 
ly in a country house. Alain thought still the 
better of Raoul that, Parisian though he was, he 
could appreciate the charm of an evening so in- 
nocently spent. 

On taking leave, the Contessa gave Alain a 


general invitation to drop in whenever he was 
not better engaged. 

“I except only the opera nights,” said she. 
“ My husband has gone to Milan on his affairs, 
and during his absence I do not go to parties ; 
the opera I can not resist.” 

Raoul set Alain down at his lodgings. “Am 
revoir ; to-morrow at one o’clock expect Enguer- 
rand and myself.” 


CHAPTER VII. 

Raoul and Enguerrand called on Alain at the 
hour fixed. 

“ In the first place,” said Raoul, “ I must beg 
you to accept my mother’s regrets that she can 
not receive you to-day. She and the Contessa 
belong to a society of ladies formed for visiting 
the poor, and this is their day ; but to-morrow 
you must dine with us en famille. Now to busi- 
ness. Allow me to light my cigar while you 
confide the whole state of affairs to Enguerrand : 
whatever he counsels I am sure to approve.” 

Alain, as briefly as he could, stated his cir- 
cumstances, his mortgages, and the hopes which 
his avoid had encouraged him to place in the 
friendly disposition of M. Louvier. When he 
had concluded, Enguerrand mused for a few mo- 
ments before replying. At last he said, “ Will 
you trust me to call on Louvier on your behalf? 
I shall but inquire if he is inclined to take on 
himself the other mortgages ; and if so, on what 
terms. Our relationship gives me the excuse 
for my interference ; and, to say truth, I have 
had much familiar intercourse with the man. I 
too am a speculator, and have often profited by 
Louvier’s advice. You may ask what can be 
his object in serving me ; he can gain nothing 
by it. To this I answer, the key to his good of- 
fices is in his character. Audacious though he 
be as a speculator, he is wonderfully prudent as 
a politician. This belle France of ours is like a 
stage tumbler ; one can never be sure whether 
it will stand on its head or its feet. Louvier 
very wisely wishes to feel himself safe, whatever 
party comes uppermost. He has no faith in the 
duration of the empire ; and as, at all events, 
the empire will not confiscate his millions, he 
takes no trouble in conciliating Imperialists. 
But on the principle which induces certain sav- 
ages to worship the devil and neglect the bon 
Dieu, because the devil is spiteful and the bon 
Dieu is too beneficent to injure them, Louvier, 
at heart detesting as well as dreading a republic, 
lays himself out to secure friends with the Repub- 
licans of all classes, and pretends to espouse their 
cause. Next to them he is very conciliatory to 
the Orleanists. Lastly, though he thinks the 
Legitimists have no chance, he desires to keep 
well with the nobles of that party, because they 
exercise a considerable influence over that sphere 
of opinion which belongs to fashion ; for fashion 
is never powerless in Paris. Raoul and myself 
are no mean authorities in salons and clubs ; and 
a good word from us is worth having. 

“ Besides, Louvier himself in his youth set 
up for a dandy ; and that deposed ruler of dan- 
dies, our unfortunate kinsman, Victor de Mau- 
leon, shed some of his own radiance on the mon- 
ey-lender’s son. But when Victor’s star was 
eclipsed, Louvier ceased to gleam. The dan- 


THE PARISIANS. 


61 


dies cut him. In his heart he exults that the 
dandies now throng to his soirees. Bref^ the 
millionnaire is especially civil to me — the more 
so as I know intimately two or three eminent 
jouiTialists ; and Louvier takes pains to plant 
garrisons in the press. I trust I have explained 
the grounds on which I may be a better diplo- 
matist to employ than your avou6 ; and with your 
leave I will go to Louvier at once. ” 

“Let him go,” said Raoul. “Enguerrand 
never fails in any thing he undertakes, especial- 
ly,” he added, with a smile half sad, half tender, 
“ when one wishes to replenish one’s purse.” 

“ I, too, gratefully grant such an embassador 
all powers to treat,” said Alain. “I am only 
ashamed to consign to him a post so much be- 
neath his genius,” and “his birth” be was about 
to add, but wisely checked himself. Enguer- 
rand said, shrugging his shoulders, “You can’t 
do me a greater kindness than by setting my 
wits at work. I fall a martyr to ennui when I 
am not in action,” he said, and was gone. 

“It makes me very melancholy at times,” 
said Raoul, flinging away the end of his cigar, 
“to think that a man so clever and so energetic 
as Enguerrand should be as much excluded from 
the service of his country as if he were an Iro- 
quois Indian. He would have made a great 
diplomatist.” 

“Alas!” replied Alain, with a sigh, “I begin 
to doubt whether we Legitimists are justified in 
inainiaining a useless loyalty to a sovereign who 
renders us morally exiles in the land of our 
birth.” 

“I have no doubt on the subject,” said Raoul. 
“\Ye are not justified on the score of policy, but 
we have no option at present on the score of 
honor. We should gain so much for ourselves 
if we adopted the state livery and took the state 
wages that no man would esteem us as patriots ; 
we should only be despised as apostates. So 
long as Henry V. lives, and does* not resign his 
claim, we can not be active citizens ; we must 
be mournful lookers-on. But what matters it ? 
We nobles of the old race are becoming rapidly 
extinct. Under any form of government like- 
ly to be established in France we are equally 
doomed. The French people, aiming at an im- 
possible equality, will never again tolerate a race 
of gentilshommes. They can not prevent, with- 
out destroying commerce and capital altogether, 
a quick succession of men of the day, who form 
nominal aristocracies much more opposed to 
equality than any hereditary class of nobles. 
But they refuse these fleeting substitutes of born 
patricians all permanent stake in the country, 
since whatever estate they buy must be subdi- 
vided at their death. My poor Alain, you are 
making it the one ambition of your life to pre- 
serve to your posterity the home and lands of 
your forefathers. How is that possible, even 
supposing you could redeem the mortgages? 
You marry some day — you have children, and 
Rochebriant must then be sold to pay for their 
separate portions. How this condition of things, 
while rendering us so ineffective to perform the 
normal functions of a noblesse in public life, af- 
fects us in private life may be easily conceived. ^ 

‘ ‘ Condemned to a career of pleasure and fri- 
volity, we can scarcely escape from the contagion 
of extravagant luxury which forms the vice of 
the time. With grand names to keep up, and 

E 


small fortunes whereon to keep them, we readily 
incur embarrassment and debt. Then needi- 
ness conquers pride. We can not be great mer- 
chants, but we can be small gamblers on the 
Bourse, or, thanks to the Credit Mobilier^ imi- 
tate a cabinet minister, and keep a shop under 
another name. Perhaps you have heard that 
Enguerrand and I keep a shop. Pray buy your 
gloves there. Strange fate for men whose an- 
cestors fought in the first Crusade — inais que 
voulez-vous 

“I was told of the shop,” said Alain, “but 
the moment I knew you I disbelieved the story. ” 

“ Quite true. Shall I confide to you why we 
resorted to that means of finding ourselves in 
pocket-money? My father gives us rooms in 
his hotel ; the use of his table, which we do not 
much profit by ; and an allowance, on which we 
could not live as young men of our class live at 
Paris. Enguerrand had his means of spending 
pocket-money, I mine ; but it came to the same 
thing — the pockets were emptied. We incurred 
debts. Two years ago my father straitened 
himself to pay them, saying, ‘The next time 
you come to me with debts, however small, you 
must pay them yourselves, or you must marry, 
and leave it to me to find you wdves.’ This 
threat appalled us both. A month afterward 
Enguerrand made a lucky hit at the Bourse, and 
proposed to invest the proceeds in a shop. I re- 
sisted as long as I could, but Enguerrand tri- 
umphed over me, as he always does. He found 
an excellent deputy in a bonne who had nursed 
us in childhood, and married a journeyman per- 
fumer who understands the business. It an- 
swers t^’ell ; we are not in debt, and we have pre- 
served our freedom.” 

After these confessions Raoul went away, and 
Alain fell into a mournful reverie, from which 
he was roused by a loud ring at his bell. He 
opened the door, and beheld M. Louvier. The 
burly financier w*as much out of breath after 
making so steep an ascent. It was in gasps 
that he muttered, “ Bon jour ; excuse me if I 
derange you.” Then entering and seating him- 
self on a chair, he took some minutes to recover 
speech, rolling his eyes staringly round the mea- 
gre, unluxurious room, and then concentrating 
their gaze upon its occupier. 

“Peste, my dear Marquis!” he said at last; 
“ I hope the next time I visit you the ascent 
may be less arduous. One would think you 
were in training to ascend the Himalaya. ” 

The haughty noble Avrithed under this jest, 
and the spirit inborn in his order spoke in his 
answer : 

“I am accustomed to dwell on heights, M. 
Louvier ; the castle of Rochebriant is not on a 
level with the town.” 

An angry gleam shot from the eyes of the 
millionnaire, but there Avas no other sign of dis- 
pleasure in his answer : 

“ Bien dit, nion cher : hoAV you remind me of 
your father! Now give me leaA'e to speak on af- 
fairs. I haA'e seen your cousin, Enguerrand de 
Vandemar. 'Homme demoynes, though yb/i gar- 
^n. He proposed that you should call on me. 
I said ‘ no’ to the cher petit Enguerrand — a visit 
from me Avas due to you. To cut matters short, 
M. Gandrin has allowed me to look into your 
papers. I Avas disposed to serve you from tho 
first ; I am still more disposed to serve you noAv. 


G2 


THE PAKISIANS. 


I undertake to pay off all your other mortgages, 
and become sole mortgagee, and on terms that I 
have jotted down on this paper, and which I 
hope will content you.” 

He placed a paper in Alain’s hand, and took 
out a box, from which he extracted a jujube, 
placed it in his mouth, folded his hands, and re- 
clined back in his chair, with his eyes half closed, 
as if exhausted alike by his ascent and his gen- 
erosity. 

In effect, the terms were unexpectedly liberal. 
The reduced interest on the mortgages would 
leave the Marquis an income of £1000 a year in- 
stead of £100. Louvier proposed to take on 
himself the legal cost of transfer, and to pay to 
the Marquis 2;), 000 francs on the completion of 
the deed as a bonus. The mortgage did not ex- 
empt the building land, as Hebert desired. In 
all else it was singularly advantageous, and Alain 
could but feel a thrill of grateful delight at an 
offer by which his stinted income was raised to 
comparative affluence. 

“Well, Marquis,” said Louvier, “what does 
the castle say to the town ?”' 

“ P.I. Louvier,” answered Alain, extending his 
hand with cordial eagerness, “accept my sincere 
apologies for the indiscretion of my metaphor. 
Poverty is proverbially sensitive to jests on it. 
I owe it to you if I can not hereafter make that 
excuse for any words of mine that may displease 
you. The terms you propose are most liberal, 
and I close with them at once.” 

“ .Bon,” said Louvier, shaking vehemently the 
hand offered to him; “I will take the paper to 
Gandrin, and instruct him accordingly. And 
now may I attach a condition to the agreement, 
which is not put down on paper ? It may have 
surprised you perhaps that I should promise a 
gratuity of 25,000 francs on completion of the 
contract. It is a droll thing to do, and not in 
the ordinary way of business ; therefore I must 
explain. Marquis, pardon the liberty I take, 
but you have inspired me with an interest in 
your future. With your birth, connections, and 
figure, you should push your way in the world 
far and fast. But you can’t do so in a province. 
You must find your opening at Paris. I wish 
you to spend a year in the capital, and live, not 
extravagantly, like a nouveau riche, but in a way 
not unsuited to your rank, and permitting you 
all the social advantages that belong to it. These 
25,000 francs, in addition to your improved in- 
come, will enable you to gratify my wish in this 
respect. Spend the money in Paris : you will 
want every sou of it in the course of the year. 
It will be money well spent. Take my advice, 
cher Marquis. Au plaisir.'' 

The financier bowed himself out. The young 
Marquis forgot all the mournful reflections with 
which Raoul’s conversation had inspired him. 
He gave a new touch to his toilet, and sallied 
forth with the air of a man on whose morning 
of life a sun heretofore clouded has burst forth 
and transformed’ the' face of the landscape. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

Since the evening spent at the Savarins’ Gra- 
ham had seen no more of Isaura. He had avoid- 
ed all chance of seeing her; in fact, the jealousy 


with which he had viewed her manner toward 
Rameau, and the angry amaze with which he 
had heard her proclaim her friendship for Ma- 
dame de Grantmesnil, served to strengthen the 
grave and secret reasons which made him desire 
to keep his heart yet free and his hand yet un- 
pledged. But, alas ! the heart was enslaved al- 
ready. It was under the most fatal of all spells 
— first love conceived at first sight. He was 
wretched, and in his wretchedness his resolves 
became involuntarily weakened. He found him- 
self making excuses for the beloved. What 
cause had he, after all, for that jealousy of the 
young poet which had so offended him ? And 
if, in her youth and inexperience, Isaura had 
made her dearest friend of a great writer by 
whose genius she might be dazzled, and of 
whose opinions she might scarcely be aware, 
was it a crime that necessitated her eternal ban- 
ishment from the reverence which belongs to all 
manly love ? Certainly he found no satisfactory 
answers to such self-questionings. And then 
those grave reasonings known only to himself, 
and never to be confided to another — why he 
should yet reserve his hand unpledged — were 
not so imperative as to admit of no compromise. 
They might entail a sacrifice, and not a small 
one to a man of Graham’s views and ambition. 
But what is love if it can think any sacrifice 
short of duty and honor too great to offer up un- 
known, uncomprehended, to the one beloved? 
Still, while thus softened in his feelings towaid 
Isaura, he became, perhaps in consequence of 
such softening, more and more restlessly im- 
patient to fulfill the object for which he had 
come to Paris, the great step toward which was 
the discovery of the undiscoverable Louise Duval. 

He had written more than once to M. Renard 
since the interview with that functionary already 
recorded, demanding whether Renard had not 
made some progress in the research on which 
he was employed, and had received short unsat- 
isfactory replies preaching patience and implying 
hope. 

The plain truth, however, was that M. Renard 
had taken no further pains in the matter. He 
considered it utter waste of lime and thought to 
attempt a discovery to which the traces were so 
faint and so obsolete. If the discovery was ef- 
fected, it must be by one of those chances which 
occur without labor or forethought of our own. 
He trusted only to such a chance in continuing 
the chaise he had undertaken. But during the 
last day or two Graham had become yet more 
impatient than before, and peremptorily request- 
ed another visit from this dilatory confidant. 

In that visit, finding himself pressed hard, and 
though naturally willing, if possible, to retain a 
client unusually generous, yet being, on the 
whole, an honest member of his profession, and 
feeling it to be somewhat unfair to accept large 
remuneration for doing nothing, M. Renard said, 
frankly, “Monsieur, this affair is beyond me; 
the keenest agent of our police could make noth- 
ing of it. Unless you can tell me more than you 
have done I am utterly without a clew. I resign, 
therefore, the task with which you honored me, 
willing to resume it again if you can give me in- 
formation that could render me of use.” 

“What sort of information?” 

“At least the names of some of the lady’j 
relations who may yet be living.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


6:i 


“But it strikes me that if I could get at that 
piece of knowledge, I should not require the 
services of the police. The relations would tell 
me what had become of Louise Duval quite as 
readily as they would tell a police agent.” 

“Quite true, monsieur. It would really be 
jacking your pockets if I did not at once retire 
from ycur service. Nay, monsieur, pardon me — 
no further jmyments; I have already accepted 
too much. Your most obedient servant.” 

Graham, left alone, fell into a very gloomy 
reverie. He could not but be sensible of the 
difficulties in the way of the object wdiich had 
brought him to Paris, with somewhat sanguine 
e.xpectations of success, founded on a belief in 
the omniscience of the Parisian police, which is 
only to be justified when they have to deal with 
a murderess or a political incendiary. But the 
name of Louise Duval is aboat as common in 
France as that of Mary Smith in England ; and 
the English reader may judge what would be the 
likely result of inquiring through the ablest of 
our detectives after some Mary Smith, of whom 
you could give little more information than that 
she was the dangliter of a drawir.g-master, who 
had died twenty years ago, that it was about fif- 
teen years since any thing had been heard of her, 
and that you could not say if, through marriage 
or for other reasons, she had changed her name 
or not, and you had reasons for declining re- 
course to public advertisements. In the course 
of inquiry so instituted the probability would 
be that you might hear of a great many Mary 
Smiths, in the j)ursuit of whom your evijdoye 
would lose all sight and scent of the one Mary 
Smith for whom the chase was instituted. 

In the midst of Graham’s desjjairing reflections 
his laquais announced M. Frederic Lemercier. 

‘■‘‘Cher Grarm-Varn. A thousand pardons if 
I disturb you at this late hour of the evening; 
but you remember the request you made me 
Avhen you first arrived in Paris this season?” 

“Of course I do — in case you should ever 
chance in your wide round of acquaintances to 
fall in with a Madame or Mademoiselle Duval, 
of about the age of forty, or a year or so less, 
to let me know : and you did fall in with two 
ladies of that name, but they were not the right 
one — not the person whom my friend begged me 
to discover — both much too young.” 

bien, vion cher. If you will come with 
me to le hal chavi]>etre in the Champs Elysees 
to-night, I can show you a third Madame Duval: 
lier Christian name is Louise, too, of the age 
you mention — though she does her best to look 
younger, and is still very handsome. You said 
your Duval was handsome. It was only last 
evening that I met this lady at a soiree given by 
Mademoiselle Jnlie Caumartin, coryphee distin- 
yv.ee, in love with young Rameau.” 

“In love with young Rameau? I am very 
glad to hear it. He returns the love ?” 

“ I suj^pose so. He seems very proud of it. 
But a jtropos of Madame Duval, she has been 
long absent from Paris — just returned — and 
looking out for conquests. She says she has a 
great penchant for the English ; promises me to 
be at this ball. Come.” 

‘ ‘ Hearty thanks, my dear Lemercier. I am at 
your service. ” 


CHAPTER IX. 

The hal champetre was gay and brilliant, as 
such festal scenes are at Paris. A lovely night 
in the midst of May — lamps below and stars 
above: the society mixed, of course. Evidently, 
when Graham had singled out Frederic Lemer- 
cier from all his acquaintances at Paris to con- 
join with the official aid of M. Renard in search 
ot the mysterious lady, he had conjectured the 
probability that she might be found in the Bo- 
hemian world so familiar to Frederic— if not as 
an inhabitant, at least as an explorer. Bohemia 
was largely represented at the bal champetre, 
but not without a fair sprinkling of what we call 
the “ respectable classes,” especially English and 
Americans, who brought theii- wives there to take 
care of them. Frenchmen, not needing such 
care, jirudently left their wives at home. Among 
the Frenchmen of station were the Comte de 
Passy and the Vicomte de Breze. 

On first entering the gardens Graham’s eye 
was attracted and dazzled by a brilliant form. 
It was standing under a festoon of flowers ex- 
tended from tree to tree, and a gas jet opposite 
shone full upon the face — the face of a girl in all 
the freshness of youth. If the freshness owed 
any thing to art, the art was so well disguised 
that it seemed nature. The beauty of the coun- 
tenance was Hebe-like, joyous, and radiant, and 
yet one could not look at the girl without a senti- 
ment of deep mournfulness. IShe was surrounded 
by a group of young men, and the ring of her 
laugh jarred u})on Graham’s ear. He pressed 
Frederic’s arm, and directing his attention to the 
girl, asked who she was. 

“Who? Don’t you know ? That is Julie Cau- 
martin. A little while ago her equijtage was the 
most admired in the Bois, and great ladies conde- 
scended to copy her dress or her coiffure. But 
she has lost her sjdendor, and dismissed the rich 
admirer who sui)plied the fuel for its blaze, since 
she fell in love with Gustave Rameau. Doubt- 
less she is expecting him to-night. You ought 
to know her : shall I present you ?” 

“No,” answered Graham, with a comjjassion- 
ate expression in his manly face. “So young; 
seemingly so gay. How I pity her!” 

“What! for throwing herself away on Rameau ? 
True. There is a great deal of good in her girl’s 
nature, if she had been properly trained. Rameau 
wrote a pretty poem on her, which turned her head 
and won her heart, in which she is styled the ‘On- 
dine of Paris’ — a nymph-like type of Paris itself. ” 

“Vanishing type, like her namesake; born 
of the spray, and vanishing soon into the deep,” 
said Graham. “Pray go and look for the Du- 
val: you will find me seated yonder.” 

Graham passed into a retired alley, and threw 
himself on a solitary bench, while Lemercier 
went in search of Madame Duval. In a few 
minutes the Frenchman reappeared. By his 
side was a lady, well dressed, and as she passed 
under the lamps Graham perceived that, though 
of a certain age, she was undeniably handsome. 
His heart beat more qnickly. Surely this was 
the Louise Duval he sought. 

He rose from his seat, and was presented in 
due form to the lady, with whom Frederic then 
discreetly left him. 

“Monsieur Lemercier tells me that you think 
that we were once acquainted with each other.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


G4 

“Nay, madame; I should not fail to recog- 
nize you were that the case. A friend of mine 
had the honor of knowing a lady of your name ; 
and should I be fortunate enough to meet that 
lady, I am charged with a commission that may 
not be unwelcome to her. M. Lemercier tells 
me your nom de bapteme, is Louise.” 

“Louise Corinne, monsieur.” 

“ And I presume that Duval is the name you 
take from your parents.” 

“No; my father’s name was Bernard. I 
married, when I was a mere child, M. Duval, in 
the wine trade at Bordeaux.” 

“Ah, indeed!” said Graham, much disap- 
pointed, but looking at her with a keen, search- 
ing eye, which she met with a decided frankness. 
Evidently, in his judgment, she was speaking 
the truth. • 

“You know English, I think, madame,” he 
resumed, addressing her in that language. 

“A leetle — speak un peu." 

“Only a little ?” 

Madame Duval looked puzzled, and replied in 
French, with a laugh, “Is it that you were told 
that I spoke English by your countryman. Mi- 
lord Sare Boulby ? Petit sc€lerat^ I hope he is 
well. He sends you a commission for me — so he 
ought : he behaved to me like a monster.” 

“ Alas I I know nothing of my lord Sir Boul- 
by. Were you never in England yourself?” 

“ Never” — with a coquettish side glance — “I 
should like so much to go. I have a foible for 
the English in spite of that vilain petit Boulby. 
Who is it gave you the commission for me? 
Ha! I guess — le Capitaine Nelton.” 

“No. What year, madame, if not imperti- 
nent, were you at Aix-la-Chnpelle?” 

“You mean Baden? I was there seA’en years 
ago, when I met le Capitaine Nelton — bel hoinme 
aux cheveux rouges." 

“ But you have been at Aix ?” 

“Never.” 

“I have, then, been mistaken, madame, and 
have only to offer my most humble apologies.” 

“ But perhaps you will favor me with a visit, 
and we may on further conversation find that 
you are not mistaken. I can’t stay now, for I 
am engaged to dance with the Belgian, of whom, 
no doubt, M. Lemercier has told you.” 

“No, madame, he has not.” 

“Well, then, he will tell you. The Belgian 
is very jealous. But I am always at home be- 
between three and four. This is my card.” 

Graham eagerly took the card, and exclaim- 
ed, “Is this vour own handwriting, madame?” 

“Yes, indeed.” 

“ Tres belle ecriture" said Graham, and re- 
ceded with a ceremonious bow. “ Any thing so 
utdike her handwriting. Another disapjwint- 
ment,” muttered the Englishman, as the lady 
went back to the ball. 

A few minutes later Graham joined Lemercier, 
who was talking with De Passy and De Breze. 

“Well,” said Lemercier, when his eye rested 
on Graham, “I hit the right nail on the head 
this time, eh ?” 

Graham shook his head. 

“ What ! Is she not the right Louise Duval ?” 

“ Certainly not.” 

“The Count de Passy overheard the name, 
and turned, “ Louise Duval,” he said ; “does 
Monsieur Vane know a Louise Duval?” 


“ No ; but a friend asked me to inquire after 
a lady of that name whom he had met many 
years ago at Paris.” 

The Count mused a moment, and said, “Is it 
possible that your friend knew the family De 
Mauleon ?” 

“ I really can’t say. What then ?” 

“ The old Vicomte de Mauleon was one of my 
most intimate associates. In fact, our houses 
are connected. And he was extremely grieved, 
poor man, when his daughter Louise married her 
drawing-master, Auguste Duval.” 

“ Her drawing-master, Auguste Duval ? Pray 
say on. I think the Louise Duval my friend knew 
must have been her daughter. She was the only 
child of a drawing-master or artist named Au- 
guste Duval, and probably enough her Christian 
name would have been derived from her mother. 
A Mademoiselle de Mauleon, then, married M. 
Auguste Duval ?” 

“ Yes; the old Vicomte had espoused en pre- 
mises noces Mademoiselle Camille de Chavigny, 
a lady of birth equal to his own — had by her one 
daughter, Louise. I recollect her well — a plain 
girl, with a high nose and a sour expression. 
She was just of age when the first Vicomtess 
died, and by the marriage settlement she suc- 
ceeded at once to her mother’s fortune, which 
was not large. The Vicomte was, however, so 
poor that the loss of that income was no trifle to 
him. Though past fifty, he was still very hand- 
some. Men of that generation did not age soon, 
monsieur,” said the Count, expanding his fine 
chest and laughing exultingly. 

“ He married, en secondes noces, a lady of 
still higher birth than the first, and with a much 
better dot. Louise was indignant at this, hated 
her step-mother, and when a son was born by the 
second marriage she left the paternal roof, went 
to reside with an old female relative near the 
Luxembourg, and there married this drawing- 
master. Her father and the family did all they 
could to prevent it ; but in these democratic 
days a woman who has attained her majority 
can, if she persist in her determination, marry 
to please herself, and disgrace her ancestors. 
After that mSnlliance her father never would 
see her again. I tried in vain to soften him. 
All his parental affections settled on his hand- 
some Victor. Ah ! you are too young to have 
known Victor de Mauleon during his short reign 
at Paris — as roi des viveurs." 

“Yes, he was before my time; but I have heard 
of him as a young man of great fashion — said to 
be very clever, a duelist, and a sort of Don Juan.” 

“ Exactly.” 

“ And then I remember vaguely to have heard 
that he committed, or was said to have commit- 
ted, some villainous action connected with a great 
lady’s jewels, and to have left Paris in conse- 
quence.” 

“ Ah, yes, a sad scrape. At that time there 
was a political crisis ; we were under a republic ; 
any thing against a noble was believed. But 1 
am sure Victor de Mauleon was not the man to 
commit a larceny. However, it is quite true 
that he left Paris, and I don’t know what has 
become of him since.” Here he touched De 
Breze, who, though still near, had not been list- 
ening to this conversation, but interchanging 
jest and laughter with Lemercier on the motley 
I scene of the dance. 



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\ ' . ■ 




THE PARISIANS. 


G5 


“ De Breze, have you ever heard what became 
ofpoor dear Victor de Mauleori? Youkiiewhim.” 

“ Knew him ? I should think so. Who could 
he in the great world and not know le beau Vic- 
tor ? No ; after he vanished I never heard more 
of him — doubtless long since dead. A good- 
hearted fellow in spite of all his sins.” 

“ My dear M. de Breze, did you know his half- 
sister?” asked Graham — “a Madame Duval?” 

“ No ; I never heard he had a half-sister. 
Halt there: I recollect that I met Victor once 
in the garden at Versailles, walking arm in arm 
with the most beautiful girl I ever saw ; and 
when I complimented him afterward at the 
Jockey Club on his new conquest, he replied, 
very gravely, that the young lady was his niece. 
‘Niece!’ said I; ‘why, there can’t be more 
than five or six years between you.’ ‘About 
that, I suppose,’ said he; ‘my half-sister, her 
mother, was more than twenty years older than 
I at the time of my birth.’ I doubted the truth 
of his story at the time; but since you- say he 
really had a sister, my doubt wronged him.” 

“ Have you never seen this same young lady 
since?” 

“Never.” 

“ How many years ago was this?” 

“Let me see — about tw'enty or twenty-one 
years ago. How time Hies !” 

Graham still continued to question, but could 
learn no further particulars. He turned to quit 
the gardens just as the band w’as striking up for 
a fresh dance, a wild German waltz air, and 
mingled with that German music his ear caught 
the sprightly sounds of the French laugh, one 
laugh distinguished from the rest by a more gen- 
uine ring of light-hearted joy — the laugh that 
he had heard on entering the gardens, and the 
sound of which had then saddened him. Look- 
ing toward the quarter from which it came, he 
again saw the “ Ondine of Paris.” She was not 
now the centre of a group. She had just found 
Gustave Rameau ; and w'as clinging to his arm 
with a look of happiness in her face, frank and 
innocent as a child’s. And so they passed amidst 
the dancers dowm a solitary lamp-lit alley, till 
lost to the Englishman’s lingering gaze. 


CHAPTER X. 

The next morning Graham sent again for M. 
Renard. 

^‘Well,” he cried, when that dignitary ap- 
peared and took a seat beside him; “chance 
has favored me.” 

“I always counted on chance, monsieur. 
Chance has more wit in its little finger than the 
Paris police in its whole body.” 

“I have ascertained the relations, on the 
mother’s side, of Louise Duval, and the only 
question is how to get at them.” 

Here Graham related what he had heard, and 
ended by saying, “This Victor de Mauleon is 
therefore my Louise Duval’s uncle. He was, no 
doubt, taking charge of her in the year that the 
persons interested in her discovery lost sight of 
her in Paris ; and surely he must know what 
became of her afterw'ard.” 

'“Very probably; and chance may befriend 
US yet in the discovery of Victor de Mauleon. 


You seem not to know’ the particulars of that 
story about the jew'els w'hich brought him into 
some connection with the police, and resulted in 
his disappearance from Paris.” 

“No ; tell me the particulars.” 

“ Victor de Mauleon was heir to some BO, 000 
or 70,000 francs a year, chiefly on the mother’s 
side ; for his father, though the representative 
of one of the most ancient houses in Ih'ance, was 
very poor, having little of his own except the 
emoluments of an appointment in the court of 
Louis Philippe. 

“ But before, by the death of his parents, Vic- 
tor came into that inheritance, he very largely 
forestalled it. His tastes were magnificent. He 
took to ‘ sport’ — kept a famous stud, w’as a great 
favorite with the English, and spoke their lan- 
guage fluently. Indeed, he w'as considered very 
accomplished, and of considerable intellectual 
powers. It W'as generally said that some day or 
other, when he had sown his wild oats, he would, 
if he took to politics, be an eminent man. Al- 
together he was a very sti'ong creature. That 
was a very strong age under Louis Philippe. 
The viveurs of Paris w’ere fine types for the he- 
roes of Dumas and Sue — full of animal life and 
spirits. Victor de Mauleon w'as a romance of 
Dumas — incarnated. ” 

“M. Renard, forgive me that I did not before 
do justice to your taste in polite literature.” 

“Monsieur, a man in my profession does not 
attain even to my humble eminence if he be not 
something else than a professional. He must 
study mankind wherever they are described — 
even in les romans. To return to Victor de 
Mauleon. Though he was a ‘sportman,’ a 
gambler, a Don Juan, a duelist, nothing was 
ever said against his honor. On the contrary, 
on matters of honor he was a received, oracle ; 
and even though he had fought several duels 
(that was the age of duels), and was reported 
without a superior, almost without an equal, in 
either weapon — the sw'ord or the pistol — he is 
said never to have w'antonly provoked an en- 
counter, and to have so used his skill that he 
contrived never to slay, nor even gravely to 
wound, an antagonist. 

“I remember one instance of his generosity 
in this respect, for it w'as much talked of at the 
time. One of your countrymen, who had never 
handled a fencing-foil nor fired a pistol, took of- 
fense at something M. de Mauleon had said in 
disparagement of the Duke of Wellington, and 
called him out. Victor de Mauleon accepted 
the challenge, discharged his pistol, not in the 
air — that might have been an affront — but so as 
to be w’ide of the mark, w'alked up to the lines to 
be shot at, and w'hen missed, said, ‘ Excuse the 
susceptibility of a Frenchman, loath to believe 
that his countrymen can be beaten save by acci- 
dent, and accept every apology one gentleman 
can make to another for having forgotten the re- 
spect due to one of the most renowned of your 
national heroes.’ The Englishman’s name was 
Vane. Could it have been your father ?” 

“Very probably; just like my father to call 
out any man who insulted the honor of his coun- 
try, as represented by its men. I hope the two 
combatants became friends?” 

“That I never heard; the duel was over — 
there my story ends.” 

“Pray go on.” 


3G 


THE PARISIANS. 


“One day — it was in the midst of political 
events which would have silenced most subjects 
of private gossip — the beau monde was startled by 
the news that the Vicorate (he was then, by his 
father’s death, Vicomte) de Mauleon had been 
given into the custody of the police on the charge 

of stealing the jewels of the Duchesse de 

(the wife of a distinguished foreigner). It seems 
that some days before this event the Due, wish- 
ing to make madame, his spouse, an agreeable 
surprise, had resolved to have a diamond neck- 
lace belonging to her, and which was of setting 
so old-fashioned that she had not lately worn it, 
reset for her birthday. He therefore secretly 
possessed himself of the key to an iron safe in a 
cabinet adjoining her dressing-room (in which 
safe her more valuable jewels were kept), and 
took from it the necklace. Imagine his dismay 
when the jeweler in the Rue Vivienne to whom 
he carried it, recognized the pretended diamonds 
as imitation paste which he himself had some 
days previously inserted into an empty setting 
brought to him by a monsieur with whose name 
he was unacquainted. The Duchesse was at 
that time in delicate health ; and as the Due’s 
suspicions naturally fell on the servants, especial- 
ly on the femme de chambre, who was in great 
favor with his wife, he did not like to alarm 
madame, nor through her to put the servants on 
their guard. He resolved, therefore, to place 

tlie matter in the hands of the famous , who 

was then the pride and ornament of the Parisian 
police. And the very night afterwai'd the Vi- 
comte de Mauleon was caught and apprehended 
in the cabinet where the jewels were kept, and 
to which he had got access by a false key, or at 
least a duplicate key, found in his possession. I 
should observe that M. de Mauleon occupied the 
entresol in the same hotel in which the upper 
rooms were devoted to the Due and Duchesse 
and their suit. As soon as this charge against 
the Vicomte was made known (and it was known 
the next morning) the extent of his debts and 
the utterness of his ruin (before scarcely con- 
jectured, or wholly unheeded) became public 
through the medium of the journals, and fur- 
nished an obvious motive for the crime of which 
he was accused. We Parisians, monsieur, are 
subject to the most startling reactions of feeling. 
The men we adore one day we execrate the next. 
The Vicomte passed at once from the popular 
admiration one bestows on a hero to the popu- 
lar contempt with which one regards a petty 
larcener. Society wondered how it had ever 
condescended to receive into its bosom the gam- 
bler, the duelist, the Don Juan. How'ever, one 
compensation in the way of amusement he might 
still afford to society for the grave injuries he 
had done it. Society would attend his trial, wit- 
ness his demeanor at the bar, and watch the ex- 
])ression of his face when he was sentenced to 
the galleys. But, monsieur, this wretch com- 
pleted the measure of his iniquities. He was 
not tried at all. The Due and Duchesse quitted 
Paris for Spain, and the Due instructed his law- 
yer to withdraw his charge, stating his convic- 
tion of the Vicomte’s complete innocence of any 
other offense than that which he himself had 
confessed.” 

“ What did the Vicomte confess ? you omitted 
to state that.” 

“The Vicomte, when apprehended, confessed 


that, smitten by an insane passion for the Du- 
chesse, which she had, on his presuming to de- 
clare it^ met with indignant scorn, he had taken 
advantage of his lodgment in the same house to 
admit himself into the cabinet adjoining her 
dressing-room by means of a key which he had 
procured made from an impression of the key- 
Iiole taken in wax. 

“ No evidence in support of any other charge 
against the Vicomte was forth-coming — nothing, 
in short, beyond the in fraction du domicile caused 
by the madness of youthful love, and for which 
there was no prosecution. The law, therefore, 
could have little to say against him. But society 
was more rigid, and, exceedingly angry to find 
that a man who had been so conspicuous for lux- 
ury should prove to be a pauper, insisted on be- 
lieving that M. de Mauleon was guilty of the 
meaner, though not perhaps, in the eyes of hus- 
bands and fathers, the more heinous of the two 
offenses. I presume that the Vicomte felt that 
he had got into a dilemma from which no pistol- 
shot or sword -thrust could free him, for he left 
Paris abruptly, and has not since reappeared. 
The sale of his stud and effects sufficed, I believe, 
to pay his debts, for I will do him the justice to 
say that they were paid.” 

“But though the Vicomte de Mauleon has 
disappeared, he must have left relations at Paris, 
who would perhaps know what has become of 
him and of his niece.” 

“ I doubt it. He had no very near relations. 
The nearest was an old celibataire of the same 
name, from whom he had some expectations, 
but who died shortly after this esclandre, and 
did not name the Vicomte in his will. M. Vic- 
tor had numerous connections among the highest 
families — the Rochebriants, Chavignys, Vande- 
mars, Beauvilliers. But they are not likely to 
have retained any connection with a ruined vau- 
rien, and still less with a niece of his who was 
the child of a drawing-master. But now you 
have given me a clew, I will try to follow it up. 
We must find the Vicomte, and I am not with- 
out hope of doing so. Pardon me if I decline to 
say more at present. I would not raise false ex- 
pectations. But in a week or two I will have 
the honor to call again upon monsieur.” 

“Wait one instant. You have really a hope 
of discovering M. de Mauleon ?” 

“Yes. I can not say more at present.” 

M. Renard departed. 

Still that hope, however faint it might prove, 
served to reanimate Graham ; and with that hope 
his heart, as if a load had been lifted from its 
mainspring, returned instinctively to the thought 
of Isaura. Whatever seemed to promise an early 
discharge of the commission connected with the 
discovery of Louise Duval seemed to bring Isaura 
nearer to him, or at least to excuse his yearning 
desire to see more of her — to understand her bet- 
ter. Faded into thin air was the vague jealousy 
of Gustave Rameau which he had so unreason- 
ably conceived ; he felt as if it were impossible 
that the man whom the “Ondine of Paris” 
claimed as her lover could dare to woo or hope 
to win an Isaura. He even forgot the friendship 
with the eloquent denouncer of the marriage- 
bond, which a little while ago had seemed to 
him an unpardonable offense; he remembered 
only the lovely face, so innocent, yet so intelli- 
gent; only the sweet voice which had for the 


67 


THE PARISIANS. 


first time breathed music into his own soul ; only 
the gentle hand whose touch had for the first 
time sent through his veins the thrill which dis- 
tinguishes from all her sex the woman whom we 
love. He went forth elated and joyous, and took 
his way to Isaura’s villa. As he went, the leaves 
on the trees under which he passed seemed stirred 
by the soft May breeze in sympathy with his own 
delight. Perhaps it was rather the reverse : his 


own silent delight sympathized with all delight 
in awakening nature. The lover seeking recon- 
ciliation with the loved one from whom some 
trifle has unreasonably estranged him, in a cloud- 
less day of May — if he he not happy enough to 
teel a brotherhood in all things happy — a leaf 
in bloom, a bird in song — then, indeed, he may 
call himself lover, but he does not know what is 
love. 


BOOK FOUKTH. 


CHAPTER I., 

FROM IS AURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANT- 
MBSNIL. 

“ It is many days since I wrote to you, and hut 
for your delightful note just received, reproach- 
ing me for silence, I should still be under the 
spell of that awe which certain words of M. Sa- 
varin were well fitted to produce. Chancing to 
ask him if he had written to you lately, he said, 
with that laugh of his, good-humoredly ironical, 
‘No, mademoiselle, I am not one of the Facheux 
whom Moliere has immortalized. If the meet- 
ing of lovers should be sacred from the intrusion 
of a third person, however amiable, more sacred 
still should be the parting between an author and 
his work. Madame de Grantmesnil is in that 
moment so solemn to a genius earnest as hers — 
she is bidding farewell to a companion with whom, 
once dismissed into the world, she can never con- 
verse familiarly again ; it ceases to be her com- 
panion when it becomes ours. Do not let us 
disturb the last hours they will pass together.’ 

“These words struck me much. I suppose there 
is truth in them. I can comprehend that a work 
which has long been all in all to its author, con- 
centrating his thoughts, gathering round it the 
hopes and fears of his inmost heart, dies, as it 
were, to him when he has completed its life for 
others, and launched it into a world estranged 
from the solitude in which it was born and form- 
ed. I can almost conceive that, to a writer like 
you, the very fame which attends the work thus 
sent forth chills your own love for it. The char- 
acters you created in a fairy-land, known but to 
yourself, must lose something of their mysterious 
charm when you hear them discussed and caviled 
at, blamed or praised, as if they were really the 
creatures of streets and salons. 

“I -wonder if hostile criticism pains or enrages 
you as it seems to do such other authors as I have 
known. M, Savarin, for instance, sets down in 
his tablets as an enemy to whom vengeance is 
due the smallest scribbler who wounds his self- 
love, and says, frankly, ‘To me praise is food, 
dispraise is poison. Him who feeds me I pay ; 
him Avho poisons me I break on the wheel.’ M. 
Savarin is, indeed, a skillful and energetic admin- 
istrator to his own reputation. He deals with it 
as if it were a kingdom — establishes fortifications 
for its defense — enlists soldiers to fight for it. 
He is the soul and centre of a confederation in 
which each is bound to defend the territory of the 
othei’s, and all those territories united constitute 
the imperial realm of M. Savarin. Don’t think 
me an ungracious satirist in what I am thus say- 


ing of our brilliant friend. It is not I who here 
speak ; it is himself. He avows his policy with 
the naivete Avhich makes the charm of his style 
as Avriter. ‘It is the greatest mistake,’ he said 
to me yesterday, ‘ to talk of the Republic of Let- 
ters. Every author Avho Avins a name is a sover- 
eign in his OAvn domain, be it large or small. 
Woe to any republican who Avants to dethrone 
me !’ Somehow or other, when M. Savarin thus 
talks I feel as if he Avere betraying the cause of 
genius. I can not bring myself to regard liter- 
ature as a craft — to me it is a sacred mission ; 
and in hearing this ‘ sovereign’ boast of the tricks 
by Avhich be maintains his state, I seem to listen 
to a priest Avho treats as imposture the relig- 
ion he professes to teach. M. Savarin’s faA'orite 
deve now is a young contributor to his journal, 
named Gustave Rameau. M. Savarin said the 
other day in my hearing, ‘ I and my set Avere 
Young France — GustaA'e Rameau and his set are 
New Paris.' 

“ ‘ And Avhat is the distinction between the one 
and the other ?’ asked my American friend, Mrs. 
Morley. 

“ ‘ The set of “Young France,” ’ ansAvered M. 
SaA'arin, ‘ had in it the hearty consciousness of 
youth : it Avas bold and A^ehement, AAuth abundant 
vitality and animalspirits ; AvhateA'er may be said 
against it in other respects, the poAver of theAA’s 
and sineAvs must be conceded to its chief repre- 
sentatives. But the set of “ Noav Paris” has very 
bad health, and very inditferent spirits. 8till, in 
its way, it is very clever ; it can sting and bite as 
keenly as if it were big and strong. Rameau is 
the most promising member of the set. He Avill 
be popular in his time, because he represents a 
good deal of the mind of his time — viz., the mind 
and the time of “Noav Paris.” ’ 

“Do youknoAv anything of this youngRameau’s 
Avritings ? You do not know himself, for he told 
me so, expressing a desire that Avas evidently very 
sincere, to find some occasion on Avhich to ren- 
der you his homage. He said this the first time 
I met him at M. Savarin’s, and before he knew 
hoAv dear to me are yourself and your fame. He 
came and sat by me after dinner, and Avon my 
interest at once by asking me if I had heard that 
you Avere busied on a neAv Avork ; and then, Avith- 
out Avaiting for myansAver, he launched forth into 
praises of you, Avhich made a notable contrast to 
the scorn Avith Avhich he spoke of all your contem- 
poraries, except indeed M. Savarin, Avho, hoAvever, 
might not have been pleased to hear his faAmrite 
pupil style him ‘ a great Avriter in small things.’ 
I spare you his epigrams on Dumas and Victor 
Hugo and my beloved Lamartine. Though his 


G8 


THE PARISrAXS. 


talk was showy, and dazzled me at first, I soon 
got rather tired of it — even the first time we met. 
Since then I have seen him very often, not only 
at M. Savarin’s, but he calls here at least every 
other day, and we have become quite good 
friends. He gains on acquaintance so far, that 
one can not help feeling how much he is to be 
pitied. He is so envious ! and the envious must 
be so unhappy. And then he is at once so near 
and so far from all the things that he envies. 
He longs for riches and luxury, and can only 
as yet earn a bare competence by his labors. 
Therefore he hates the rich and luxurious. His 
literary successes, instead of pleasing him, render 
him miserable by their contrast with the fame of 
the authors whom he envies and assails. He has 
a beautiful head, of which he is conscious, but it 
is joined to a body without strength or grace. 
He is conscious of this too : but it is cruel to go 
on with this sketch. You can see at once the 
kind of person who, whether he inspire afiection 
or dislike, can not fail to create an interest — pain- 
ful but compassionate. 

“You will be pleased to hear that Dr, C 

considers my health so improved that I may next 
year enter fairly on the profession for which I 
was intended and trained. Yet I still feel hesi- 
tating and doubtful. To give myself wholly up 
to the art in which I am told I could excel, must 
alienate me entirely from the ambition that yearns 
for fields in which, alas! it may perhaps never 
appropriate to itself a rood for culture — only wan- 
der, lost in a vague fairy-land, to which it has not 
the fairy’s birthright. Oh, thou great Enchant- 
ress, to whom are equally subject the streets of 
Paris and the realm of Faerie — thou who hast 
sounded to the deeps that circumfluent ocean 
called ‘practical human life,’ and hast taught 
the acutest of its navigators to consider how far 
its courses are guided by orbs in heaven — canst 
thou solve this riddle which, if it perplexes me, 
must perplex so many? What is the real dis- 
tinction between the rare genius and the com- 
monalty of human souls that feel to the quick 
all the grandest and divinest things which the 
rare genius places before them, sighing within 
themselves — ‘This rare genius does but express 
that which was previously familiar to us, so far 
as thought and sentiment extend.’ Nay, the 
genius itself, however eloquent, never does, nev- 
er can, express the whole of the thought or the 
sentiment it interprets : on the contrary, the 
greater the genius is, the more it leaves a some- 
thing of incomplete satisfaction on our minds — 
it promises so much more than it performs — it 
implies so much more than it announces. I am 
impressed with the truth of what I thus say in 
proportion as I reperuse and restudy the greatest 
writers that have come within my narrow range 
of reading. And by the greatest writers I mean 
those who are not exclusively reasoners (of such 
I can not judge), nor mere poets (of whom, so 
far as concerns the union of words with music, 
I ought to be able to judge), but the few who 
unite reason and poetry, and appeal at once to 
the common-sense of the multitude and the im- 
agination of the few. The highest type of this 
union to me is Shakspeare; and I can compre- 
hend the justice of no criticism on him which 
does not allow this sense of incomplete satisfac- 
tion, augmenting in proportion as the poet soars 
to his highest. I ask again. In what consists 


this distinction between the rare genius and the 
commonalty of minds that exclaim, ‘ He ex- 
presses what we feel, but never the whole of 
what we feel!’ Is it the mere power over lan- 
guage, a larger knowledge of dictionaries, a finer 
ear for period and cadence, a more artistic craft 
in casing our thoughts and sentiments in well- 
selected words? Is it true what Bufibn says, 
‘that the style is the man?’ Is it true what I 
am told Goethe said, ‘ Poetry is form ?’ I can 
not believe this ; and if you tell me it is true, 
then I no longer pine to be a writer. But if it 
be not true, explain to me how it is that the 
greatest genius is popular in proportion as it 
makes itself akin to us by uttering in better 
words than w'e employ that which w'as already 
within us, brings to light what in our souls was 
latent, and does but correct, beautify, and pub- 
lish the correspondence which an ordinary read- 
er carries on privately every day, between himself 
and his mind or his heart. If this superiority 
in the genius be but style and form, I abandon 
mj dream of being something else than a singer 
of words by another to the music of another. 
But then, what then ? My knowdedge of books 
and art is wonderfully small. What little I do 
know I gather from very few books, and from 
what I hear said by the few worth listening to 
w'hom I happen to meet ; and out of these, in 
solitude and reverie, not by conscious effort, I 
arrive at some results which appear to my inex- 
perience original. Perhaps, indeed, they have 
the same kind of originality as the musical com- 
positions of amateurs who effect a cantata or a 
quartette made up of borrowed details from great 
masters, and constituting a whole so original that 
no real master would deign to own it. Oh, if I 
could get you to understand how unsettled, how 
struggling, my whole nature at this moment is ! 
I wonder what is the sensation of the chrysalis 
which has been a silk-worm, when it first feels 
the new wings stirring within its shell — wings, 
alas! that are but those of the humblest and 
shortest-lived sort of moth, scarcely born into day- 
light before it dies. Could it reason, it might 
regret its earlier life, and say, ‘Better be the 
silk-worm than the moth.’ ” 


FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 

“Have you known well any English people 
in the course of your life? I say well, for you 
must have had acquaintance with many. But 
it seems to me so difficult to know an English- 
man well. Even I, who so loved and revered 
Mr. Selby — I, whose childhood was admitted 
into his companionship by that love which places 
ignorance and knowledge, infancy and age, upon 
ground so equal that heart touches heart — can 
not say that I understand the English character 
to any thing like the extent to which I fancy I 
understand the Italian and the French. Be- 
tween us of the Continent and them of the isl- 
and the British Channel ahvays flows. There 
is an Englishman here to whom I have been in- 
troduced, whom I have met, though but seldom, 
in that society which bounds th*e Paris world to 
me. Pray, pray tell me, did you ever know, ever 
meet him ? His name is Graham Vane. He is ; 
the only son, I am told, of a man who was a c^- 
! lebrite in England as an orator and 'statesman,*^ 

1 and on both sides he belongs to the haute am-5 


THE PARISIANS. 


G9 


tocratie. He himself has that indescribable air ! 
and mien to which we apply the epithet ‘ distin- 
guished.’ In the most crowded salon the eye 
would fix on liim, and involuntarily follow his 
movements. Yet his manners are frank and 
simple, w'holly without the stiffness or reserve 
which are said to characterize the English. 
There is an inborn dignity in his bearing which 
consists in the absence of all dignity assumed. 
But what strikes me most in this Englishman is 
an expression of countenance which the English 
depict by the word ‘ open’ — that expression which 
inspires you with a belief in the existence of sin- 
cerity. Mrs. Morley said of him, in that poetic 
extravagance of phrase by which the Americans 
startle the English, ‘ That man’s forehead would 
light up the Mammoth Cave. ’ Do you not know, 
Eulalie, what it is to us cultivators of art — art 
being the expression of truth through fiction — to 
come into the atmosphere of one of those souls 
in which Truth stands out bold and beautiful in 
itself, and needs no idealization through fiction ? 
Oh, how near we should be to heaven, could we 
live daily, hourly, in the presence of one the hon- 
esty of whose word we could never doubt, the 
authority of whose word we could never disobey ! 
Mr. Vane professes not to understand music — 
not even to care for it, except rarely — and yet 
he spoke of its influence over others with an en- 
thusiasm that half charmed me once more back 
to my destined calling — nay, might have chann- 
ed me wholly, but that he seemed to think that 
I — that any public singer — must be a creature 
apart from the world — the world in which such 
men live. Perhaps that is true.” 


CHAPTER II. 

It was one of those lovely noons toward the 
end of May in which a rural suburb has the mel- 
low charm of summer to him who escapes a while 
from the streets of a crowded capital. The Lon- 
doner knows its charm when he feels his tread on 
the softening swards of the Vale of Health, or, 
pausing at Richmond under the budding willow, 
gazes on the river glittering in the warmer sun- 
light, and hears from the villa gardens behind 
him the brief trill of the blackbird. But the 
suburbs round Paris are, I think, a yet more 
pleasing relief from the metropolis; they are 
more easily reached, and I know not why, but 
they seem more rural, perhaps because the con- 
trast of their repose with the stir left behind — of 
their redundance of leaf and blossom, compared 
with the prim efflorescence of trees in the Boule- 
vards and Tuileries — is more striking. Howev- 
er that may be, when Graham reached the pret- 
ty suburb in which Isaura dwelt, it seemed to 
him as if all the wheels of the loud busy life were 
suddenly smitten still. The hour was yet early ; 
he felt sure that he should find Isaura at home. 
The garden gate stood unfastened and ajar ; he 
pushed it aside and entered. I think I have be- 
fore said that the garden of the villa was shut 
out from the road, and the gaze of neighbors, by 
a wall and thick belts of evergreens ; it stretched 
behind the house somewhat far for the garden of 
a suburban villa. He paused when he had passed 
the gateway, for he heard in the distance the voice 
of one singing — singing low, singing plaintively. 


He knew it was the voice of Isaura ; he passed 
on, leaving the house behind him, and tracking 
the voice till he reached the singer. 

Isaura was seated within an arbor toward the 
farther end of the garden — an arbor which, a lit- 
tle later in the year, must indeed be delicate and 
dainty with lush exuberance of jasmine and 
woodbine ; now into its iron trellis-work leaflet 
and flowers were insinuating their gentle way. 
Just at the entrance one white rose — a winter 
rose that had mysteriously survived its relations 
— opened its pale hues frankly to the noonday 
sun. Graham approached slowly, noiselessly, 
and the last note of the song had ceased when 
he stood at the entrance of the arbor. Isaura 
did not perceive him at first, for her face was 
bent downward musingly, as was often her wont 
after singing, especially when alone. But she 
felt that the place was darkened, that something 
stood between her and the sunshine. She raised 
her face, and a quick flush mantled over it as she 
uttered his name, not loudly, not as in surprise, 
but inwardly and whisperingly, as in a sort of fear. 

“Pardon me, mademoiselle,” said Graham, 
entering; “but I heard your voice as I came 
into the garden, and it drew me onward involun- 
tarily. What a lovely air ! and what simple 
sweetness in such of the words as reached me ! 
I am so ignorant of music that you must not 
laugh at me if I ask whose is the music and 
whose are the words ? Probably both are so 
well known as to convict me of a barbarous igno- 
rance.” 

“Oh no,” said Isaura, with a still heightened 
color, and in accents embarrassed and hesitating. 
“ Both the words and music are by an unknown 
and very humble composer, yet not, indeed, quite 
original ; they have not even that merit — at least 
they were suggested by a popular song in the 
Neapolitan dialect which is said to be very old.” 

“ I don’t know if I caught the true meaning 
of the words, for they seemed to me to convey a 
more subtle and refined sentiment than is com- 
mon in the popular songs of Southern Italy.” 

“ The sentiment in the original is changed in 
the paraphrase, and not, I fear, improved by the 
change.” 

“Will you explain to me the sentiment in 
both, and let me judge which I prefer ?” 

“In the Neapolitan song a young fisherman, 
who has moored his boat under a rock on the 
shore, sees a beautiful face below the surface of 
the waters ; he imagines it to be that of a Nereid, 
and casts in his net to catch this supposed nymph 
of the ocean. He only disturbs the w^ater, loses 
the image, and brings up a few common fishes. 
He returns home disappointed, and very much 
enamored of the supposed Nereid. The next 
day he goes again to the same place, and discov- 
ers that the face which had so charmed him was 
that of a mortal girl reflected on the waters from 
the rock behind him, on which she had been 
seated, and on wfflich she had her liome. The 
original air is arch and lively; just listen to it.” 
And Isaura w'arbled one of those artless and 
somewhat meagre tunes to which light-stringed 
instruments are the fitting accompaniment. 

“That,” said Graham, “is a different music 
indeed from the other, which is deep and plaint- 
ive, and goes to the heart.” 

“ But do you not see how the words have been 
altered ? In the song you first heard me singing. 


70 


THE PARISIANS. 


the fisherman goes again to the spot, again and 
again sees the face in the water, again and again 
seeks to capture the Nereid, and never knows to 
the last that the face was that of the mortal on 
the rock close behind him, and which he passed 
by without notice every day. Deluded by an 
ideal image, the real one escapes from his eye.” 

“Is the verse that is recast meant to symbol- 
ize a moral in love ?” 

“In love ? nay, I know not ; but in life, yes — 
at least the life of the artist.” 

“ The paraphrase of the original is yours, sign- 
orina — Avords and music both. Am I not right ? 
Your silence ansAvers, ‘Yes.’ Will you pardon 
me if I say that, though there can be no doubt 
of the new beauty you haA^e given to the old 
song, I think that the moral of the old Avas the 
sounder one, the truer to human life. We do not 
go on to the last duped by an illusion. If enam- 
ored by the shadow on the Avaters, still Ave do 
look around us and discover the image it reflects.” 

Isaura shook her head gently, but made no an- 
swer. On the table before her there Avere a feAV 
myrtle sprigs and one or two buds from the last 
Avinter rose, Avhich she had been arranging into a 
simple nosegay ; she took up these, and abstract- 
edly began to pluck and scatter the rose leaves. 

“ Despise the coming May-floAvers if youAvill, 
they Avill soon be so plentiful,” said Graham; 
“ but do not cast aAvay the feAV blossoms Avhich 
Avinter has so kindly spared, and Avhich even 
summer Avill not giA^e again and, placing his 
hand on the Avinter buds, it touched hers — light- 
ly, indeed, but she felt the touch, shrank from it, 
colored, and rose from her seat. 

“The sun has left this side of the garden, the 
east Avind is rising, and you must find it chilly 
here,” she said, in an altered tone; “ Avill you 
not come into the house?” 

“It is not the air that I feel chilly,” said Gra- 
ham, Avith a half smile ; “I almost fear that my 
prosaic admonitions have displeased you.” 

“They Avere not prosaic ; and they Avere kind 
and very Avise,” she added, Avith her exquisite 
laugh — laugh so Avonderfully SAveet and musical. 
She noAv had gained the entrance of the arbor ; 
Graham joined her, and they Avalked tOAvard the 
house. He asked her if she had seen much of 
the SaA-arins since they had met. 

“Once or tAvice Ave have been there of an 
eA'ening.” 

“And encountered, no doubt, the illustrious 
young minstrel Avho despises Tasso and Cor- 
neille ?” 

“M. Rameau ? Oh yes ; he is constantly at 
the Savarins’. Do not be severe on him. He 
is unhappy — he is struggling — he is soured. An 
artist has thonis in his path Avhich lookers-on do 
not heed.” 

“All people haA'e thorns in their path, and I 
have no great respect for those Avho Avant look- 
ers-on to heed them Avhenever they are scratched. 
But M. Rameau seems to me one of those Avriters 
very common noAvadays, in France and CA-en in 
England ; Avriters Avho have never read any thing 
Avorth studying, and are, of course, presumptu- 
ous in proportion to their ignorance. I should 
not have thought an artist like yourself could 
have recognized an artist in a M. Rameau Avho 
despises Tasso AA’ithout knoAving Italian.” 

Graham spoke bitterly ; he Avas once more 
jealous. 


“Are you not an artist yourself? Are you 
not a writer ? M. SaA'arin told me you Avere a 
distinguished man of letters.” 

“ M. Savarin flatters me too much. I am not 
an artist, and I have a great dislike to that word 
as it is now hackneyed and vulgarized in England 
and in France. A cook calls himself an artist; 
a tailor does the same ; a man Avrites a gaudy 
melodrame, a spasmodic song, a sensational nov’- 
el, and straightway he calls himself an artist, and 
indulges in a pedantic jargon about ‘essence’ and 
‘form,’ assuring us that a poet Ave can under- 
stand Avants essence, and a poet Ave can scan 
Avants form. Thank Heaven, I am not vain 
enough to call myself artist. I have Avritten 
some very dry lucubiations in periodicals, chiefly 
political, or critical upon other subjects than art. 
But Avhy, a propos of M. Rameau, did you ask 
me that question respecting myself?” 

“Because much in your conversation,” ansAver- 
ed Isaura, in rather a mournful tone, “ made me 
suppose you had more sympathies Avith art and 
its cultivators than you cared to aA’ow. And if 
you had such sympathies, you Avould comprehend 
Avhat a relief it is to a poor aspirant to art like 
myself to come into communication Avith those 
Avho devote themselves to any art distinct from 
the common piirsuits of the vA^orld ; what a relief 
it is to escape from the ordinary talk of society. 
There is a sort of instinctive freemasonry among 
us, including masters and disciples, and one art 
has a felloAvship Avith other arts ; mine is but 
song and music, yet I feel attracted toward a 
sculptor, a painter, a romance-Avriter, a poet, as 
much as toAvard a singer, a musician. Do you 
understand Avhy I can not contemn M. Rameau 
as you do ? I ditfer from his tastes in literature ; 

I do not much admire such of his writings as I 
have read ; I grant that he ov’erestimates his own 
genius, whatever that be — yet I like to conA^erse 
with him : he is a straggler upAvard, though Avith 
Aveak Avings, or Avith erring footsteps, like myself.” 

“Mademoiselle,” said Graham, earnesthq “I 
can not say hoAV I thank you for this candor. 
Do not condemn me for abusing it — if — ” He 
paused. 

“If Avhat?” 

“If I, so much older than yourself — I do not 
say only in years, but in the experience of life — 
I, Avhose lot is cast among those busy and ‘ posi- 
tiA'e’ pursuits, which necessarily quicken that un- 
romantic faculty called common sense — if, I say, 
the deep interest Avith Avhich you must inspire all 
whom you admit into an acquaintance, even as 
unfamiliar as that noAv between us, makes me 
utter one caution, such as might be uttered by a 
friend or brother. BeAvare of those artistic sym- 
pathies Avhich you so touchingly confess ; bcAvare 
how, in the great events of life, you alloAV fancy 
to misguide your reason. In choosing friends on 
Avhom to rely, separate the artist from the human 
being. Judge of the human being for Avhat it is 
in itself. Do not worship the face on the Avaters, 
blind to the image on the rock. In one word, 
never see in an artist like a M. Rameau the hu- 
man being to Avhom you could intrust the des- 
tinies of your life. Pardon me, pardon me ; we 
may meet little hereafter, but you are a creature 
so utterly neAV to me, so wholly unlike any wom- 
an I have ever before encountered and admired, 
and to me seem endoAved Avirh such Avealth of 
mind and soul, exposed to such hazard, that — 


THE PARISIANS. 


71 


that — ” Again he paused, and his voice trem- 
bled as he concluded — “that it would be a deep 
sorrow to me if, perhaps years hence, I should 
have to say, ‘Alas! by what mistake has that 
wealth been wasted ! ’ ” 

While they had thus conversed, mechanically 
they had turned away from the house, and were 
again standing before the arbor. 

Graham, absorbed in the passion of his adjura- 
tion, had not till now looked into the face of the 
companion by his side. Now, when he had con- 
cluded, and heard no reply, he bent down and 
saw that Isaura was weeping silently. 

His heart smote him. 

“Forgive me,” he exclaimed, drawing her 
hand into his ; “ I have had no right to talk 
thus ; but it was not from want of respect ; it 
was — it was — ” 

The hand which was yielded to his pressed it 
gently, timidly, chastely. 

“Forgive!” murmured Isaura; “ do you think 
that I, an orphan, have never longed for a friend 
who would speak to me thus ?” And so saying, 
she lifted her eyes, streaming still, to his bended 
countenance — eyes, despite their tears, so clear 
in their innocent limpid beauty, so ingenuous, so 
frank, so virgin-like, so unlike the eyes of “any 
other woman he had encountered and admired.” 

“Alas!” he said, in quick and hurried accents, 
“ you maj'^ remember, when we have before con- 
versed, how I, though so uncultured in your art, 
still recognized its beautiful influence upon human 
breasts ; how I sought to combat your own de- 
preciation of its rank among the elevating agen- 
cies of humanity ; how, too, I said that no man 
could venture to ask you to renounce the boards, 
the lamps — resign the fame of actress, of singer. 
Well, now that you accord to me the title of 
friend, now that you so touchingly remind me 
that you are an orphan — thinking of all the perils 
the young and the beautiful of your sex must en- 
counter when they abandon private life for pub- 
lic — I think that a true friend might put the ques- 
tion, ‘ Can you resign the fame of actress, of 
singer ?’ ” 

“I will answer you frankly. The profession 
w'hich once seemed to me so alluring began to 
lose its charms in my eyes some months ago. It 
was your words, very eloquently expressed, on 
the ennobling eftects of music and song upon a 
popular audience, that counteracted the growing 
distaste to rendering up my whole life to the vo- 
cation of the stage. But now I think I should 
feel grateful to the friend whose advice interpret- 
ed the voice of my own heart, and bade me re- 
linquish the career of actress.” 

Graham’s face grew radiant. But whatever 
might have been his reply, it was arrested ; voices 
and footsteps were heard behind. He turned 
round and saw the Venosta, the Savarins, and 
Gustave Rameau. 

Isaura heard and saw also, started in a sort of 
alarmed confusion, and then instinctively retreat- 
ed toward the arbor. 

Graham hurried on to meet the signora and 
the visitors, giving time to Isaura to compose 
herself by arresting them in the pathway with 
conventional salutations. 

A few minutes later Isaura joined them, and 
there was talk to which Graham scarcely listened, 
though he shared in it by abstracted monosylla- 
bles. He declined going into the house, and took 


leave at the gate. In parting, his eyes fixed them- 
selves on Isaura. Gustave Rameau was by her 
side. That nosegay'wbich had been left in the ar- 
bor was in her hand ; and though she was bend- 
ing over it, she did not now pluck and scatter the 
rose leaves. Graham at that moment felt no Jeal- 
ousy of the fair-faced young poet beside her. 

As he walked slowly back, he muttered to him- 
self, “But am I yet in the position to hold my- 
self wholly free ? Am I, am I ? Were the sole 
choice before me that between her and ambition 
and wealth, how soon it would be made! Am- 
bition has no prize equal to the heart of such a 
woman ; wealth no sources of joy equal to the 
treasures of her love.” 


CHAPTER III. 

FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANT- 
ME8NIL. 

“The day after I posted my last, Mr. Vane 
called on us. I was in our little garden at the 
time. Our conversation was brief, and soon in- 
terrupted by visitors — the Savarins and M. Ra- 
meau. I long for your answer. I wonder how 
he impressed you, if you have met him ; how he 
would impress, if you met him now. To me he 
is so different from all others ; and I scarcely 
know why his vvords ring in my ears, and his 
image rests in my thoughts. It is strange alto- 
gether ; for though he is young, he speaks to rne 
as if he were so much older than I — so kindly, 
so tenderly, yet as if I were a child, and niuch 
as the dear Maestro might do if he thought I 
needed caution or counsel. Do not fancy, Eula- 
lie, that there is any danger of my deceiving my- 
self as to the nature of such interest as he may 
take in me. Oh no ! There is a gulf between 
us there which he does not lose sight of, and 
which we could not pass. How, indeed, I could 
interest him at all I can not guess. A rich, 
high-born Englishman, intent on political life; 
practical, prosaic — no, not prosaic ; but still with 
the kind of sense which does not admit into its 
range of vision that world of dreams which is 
familiar as their daily home to Romance and to 
Art. It has always seemed to me that for love, 
love such as I conceive it, there must be a deep 
and constant sympathy between two persons — 
not, indeed, in the usual and ordinary tiifles of 
taste and sentiment, but in those e.ssentials which 
form the root of character, and branch out in all 
the leaves and blooms that expand to the sun- 
shine and shrink from the cold — that the world- 
ling should wed the worldling, the artist the art- 
ist. Can the realist and the idealist blend to- 
gether, and hold together till death and beyond 
death ? If not, can there be true love between 
them ? By true love I mean the love which in- 
terpenetrates the soul, and once given, can never 
die. Oh, Eulalie — answer me — answer ! 

“P.S. — I have now fully made up my mind 
to renounce all though^of the stage,” 


FROM MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL TO ISAURA 
CICOGNA. 

“My dear Child, — How your mind has 
grown since you left me, the sanguine and aspiring 
votary of an art which, of all arts, brings the most 


72 


THE PAEISIANS. 


iinmediate reward to a successful cultivator, and 
is in itself so divine in its immediate effects upon 
human souls! Who shall say what may be the 
after-results of those effects which the waiters on 
])Osterity presume to despise because they are im- 
mediate ? A dull man, to whose mind a ray of 
that vague starlight undetected in the atmosphere 
of work-day life has never yet traveled ; to whom 
the philosopher, the preacher, the poet appeal in 
vain — nay, to whom the conceptions of the grand- 
est master of instrumental music are incompre- 
hensible ; to whom Beethoven unlocks no portal 
in heaven ; to whom Rossini has no mysteries on 
earth unsolved by the critics of the pit — sudden- 
ly hears the human voice of the human singer, 
and at the sound of that voice the walls which 
inclosed him fall. The something far from and 
beyond the routine of his commonplace existence 
becomes known to him. He of himself, poor 
man, can make nothing of it. He can not put 
it down on paper, and say the next morning, ‘I 
am an inch nearer to heaven than I was last 
night;’ but the feeling that he is an inch nearer 
to heaven abides with him. Unconsciously he 
is gentler, he is less earthly, and, in being nearer 
to heaven, he is stronger for earth. You singers 
do not seem to me to understand that you have 
— to use your own word, so much in vogue that it 
has become abused and trite — a mission ! When 
you talk of missions, from whom comes the mis- 
sion ? Not from men. If there be a mission 
from man to men, it must be appointed from on 
high. 

“Think of all this; and in being faithful to 
your art, be true to yourself. If you feel divided 
between that art and the art of the writer, and 
acknowledge the first to be too exacting to admit 
a rival, keep to that in which you are sure to ex- 
cel. Alas, my fair child ! do not imagine that 
we writers feel a happiness in our pursuits and 
aims more complete than that which you can 
command. If we care for fame (and, to be frank, 
we all do), that fame does not come before us 
face to face — a real, visible, palpable form, as it 
does to the singer, to the actress. I grant that 
it may be more enduring, but an endurance on 
the length of which we dare not reckon. A 
writer can not be sure of immortality till his lan- 
guage itself be dead ; and then he has but a share 
in an uncertain lottery. Nothing but fragments 
remains of the Phrynichus, who rivaled ^schy- 
lus ; of the Agathon, who perhaps excelled Eurip- 
ides ; of the Alcteus, in whom Horace acknowl- 
edged a master and a model ; their renown is not 
in their works, it is but in their names. And, 
after all, the names of singers and actors last, 
perhaps, as long. Greece retains the name of 
Pol us, Rome of Roscius, England of Garrick, 
France of Talma, Italy of Pasta, more lastingly 
than posterity is likely to retain mine. You ad- 
dress to me a question, which I have often put 
to myself — ‘What is the distinction between the 
writer and the reader, when the reader says, 
“ These are my thoughts, these are my feelings ; 
the writer has stolen them, and clothed them in 
his own words?”’ And the more the reader 
says this, the more wide is the audience, the 
more genuine the renown, and, paradox though 
it seems, the more consummate the originality of 
the writer. But no, it is not the mere gift of ex- 
pression, it is not the mere craft of the pen, it is 
not the mere taste in arrangement of word and 


cadence, which thus enables the one to interpret 
the mind, the heart, the soul of the many. It is 
a power breathed into him as he lay in his cradle, 
and a power that gathered around itself, as he 
grew up, all the influences he acquired, whether 
from observation of external nature, or from 
study of men and books, or from that experience 
of daily life which varies with every human be- 
ing. No education could make two intellects 
exactly alike, as no culture can make two leaves 
exactly alike. How truly you describe the sense 
of dissatisfaction which every writer of superior 
genius communicates to his admirers! how truly 
do you feel that the greater is the dissatisfaction 
in proportion to the writer’s genius, and the ad- 
mirer’s conception of it! But that is the mys- 
tery which makes — let me borrow a German 
phrase — the cloud-land between the finite and the 
infinite. The greatest philosopher, intent on the 
secrets of Nature, feels that dissatisfaction in Na- 
ture herself. The finite can not reduce into logic 
and criticism the infinite. 

“Let us dismiss these matters, which perplex 
the reason, and approach that which touches the 
heart — which in your case, my child, touches the 
heart of woman. You speak of love, and deem 
that the love which lasts — the household, the 
conjugal love — should be based upon such sym- 
pathies of pursuit that the artist should wed with 
the artist. 

“This is one of the questions you do well to 
address to me; for whether from my own experi- 
ence, or from that which I have gained from ob- 
servation extended over a wide range of life, and 
quickened and intensified by the class of writing 
that I cultivate, and which necessitates a calm 
study of the passions, I am an authority on such 
subjects, better than most women can be. And 
alas ! my child, I come to this result : there is no 
prescribing to men or to women whom to select, 
whom to refuse. I can not refute the axiom of 
the ancient poet, ‘ In love there is no wherefore. ’ 
But there is a time — it is often but a moment of 
time — in which love is not yet a master, in which 
we can say, ‘I will love — I will not love.’ 

“Now, if I could find you in such a moment, I 
would say to you, ‘Artist, do not love — do not 
marry — an artist.’ Two artistic natures rarely 
combine. The artistic nature is wonderfully ex- 
acting. I fear it is supremely egotistical — so 
jealously sensitive that it wjithes at the touch of 
a rival. Racine was the happiest of husbands ; 
his wife adored his genius, b>it could not under- 
stand his plays. Would Racine have been happy 
if he had married a Corneille in petticoats? I 
who speak have loved an artist, certainly equ; 1 
to myself. I am sure that he loved me. That 
sympathy in pursuits of which you speak drew us 
together, and became very soon the cause of an- 
tipathy. To both of us the endeavor to coalesce 
was misery. 

“I don’t know your M. Rameau. Savarin has 
sent me some of his writings ; from these I judge 
that his only chance of happiness would be to 
marry a commonplace woman, with separation 
de biens. He is, believe me, but one of the many 
with whom New Baris abounds, who, because 
they have the infirmities of genius, imagine they 
have its strength. 

“ I come next to the Englishman. I see how , 
serious is your questioning about him. You not 
only regard him as a being distinct from the 


73 


THE PARISIANS. 


crowd of a salon ; he stands equally apart in the 
chamber of your thoughts — you do not mention 
liim in the same letter as that which treats of 
Rameau and Savarin. He has become already 
an image not to he lightly mixed up with others. 
You would rather not have mentioned him at all 
to me, but you could not resist it. The interest 
you feel in him so perplexed you that in a kind 
of feveiish impatience you cry out to me, ‘ Can 
you solve the riddle ? Did you ever know well 
Englishmen ? Can an Englishman be under- 
stood out of his island ?’ etc., etc. Yes, I have 
known well many Englishmen. In allairs of the 
heart they are much like all other men. No; I 
do not know this Englishman in particular, nor 
any one of his name. 

“Well, my child, let us frankly grant that this 
foreigner has gained some hold on your thoughts, 
on your fancy, perhaps also on your heart. Do 
not fear that he will love you less enduringly, or 
that you will become alienated from him, because 
he is not an artist. If he be a stx'ong nature, and 
with some great purpose in life, your ambition 
w'ill fuse itself in his ; and knowing you as I do, 
I believe you would make an excellent wife to an 
Englishman whom you honored as well as loved ; 
and sorry though I should be that you relinquish- 
ed the singer’s fame, I should be consoled in 
thinking you safe in the woman’s best sphere — a 
contented home, safe from calumny, safe from 
gossip. I never had that home ; and there has 
been no part in my author’s life in which I would 
not have given all the celebrity it won for the 
obscure commonplace of such woman lot. Could 
I move human beings as pawns on a chess-board, 
I should indeed say that the most suitable and 
congenial mate for you, for a woman of sentiment 
and genius, would be a well-born and well-edu- 
cated German ; for such a German unites, with 
domestic habits and a strong sense of family ties, 
a romance of sentiment, a love of art, a predispo- 
sition toward the poetic side of life, which is very 
rare among Englishmen of the same class. But 
as the German is not forth-coming, I give my 
vote for the Englishman, provided only you love 
him. Ah, child, be sure of that. Do not mis- 
take fancy for love. All women do not require 
love in marriage, but without it that w’hich is best 
and highest in you would wither and die. Write 
to me often and tell me all. M. Savarin is right. 
My book is no longer my companion. It is gone 
from me, and I am once more alone in tlie world. 
— Youi’s affectionately. 

“P.S. — Is not your postscript a w’oman’s? 
Does it not require a woman’s postscript in reply ? 
You say in yours that you have fully made up 
your mind to renounce all thoughts of the stage. 
1 ask in mine, ‘What has the Englishman to do 
with that determination ?’ ” 


CHAPTER IV. • 

Some weeks have passed since Graham’s talk 
with Isaura in tlie garden ; he has not visited the 
villa since. His cousins the D’Altons have pass- 
ed through Paris on their way to Italy, meaning 
to stay a few days ; they staid nearly a month, 
and monopolized much of Graham's companion- 
ship. Both these w'ere reasons why, in the ha- 
bitual society of the Duke, Graham’s persuasion 


that he was not yet free to court the hand of 
Isaura became strengthened, and with that persua- 
sion necessarily came a question equally address- 
ed to his conscience: “If not yet free to court 
her hand, am I free to expose myself to the temp- 
tation of seeking to win her affection ?” But 
when his cousin was gone, his heart began to as- 
sert its own rights, to argue its own case, and 
suggest modes of reconciling its dictates to the 
obligations which seemed to oppose them. In 
this hesitating state of mind he received the fol- 
lowing note : 

“Villa. , Lao d’Enguif.n. 

“Mv DEAR Mr. Vane,— We have retreated 
from Paris to the banks of this beautiful little 
lake. Come and help to save Prank and myself 
from quarreling with each other, which, until the 
Rights of Women are firmly established, married 
folks always will do when left to themselves, es- 
pecially if they are still lovers, as Prank and I 
are. Love is a terribly quarrelsome thing. Make 
us a present of a few days out of your wealth of 
time. We will visit Montmorency and the haunts 
of Rosseau — sail on the lake at moonlight — dine 
at gypsy restaurants under trees not yet embrown- 
ed by summer heats — discuss literature and poli- 
tics — ‘ Shakspeare and the musical glasses’ — 
and be as sociable and pleasant as Boccaccio’s 
tale-tellers at Piesole. We shall be but a small 
party, only the Savarins, that unconscious sage 
and humorist Signora Venosta, and that dimple- 
cheeked Isaura, who embodies the song of night- 
ingales and the smile of summer. Refuse, and 
Prank shall not have an easy moment till he sends 
in his claims for thirty millions against the Ala- 
bama. — Yours, as you behave, 

“Lizzie IMorley.” 

Graham did not refuse. He went to Enghien 
for four days and a quarter. He was under the 
same roof as Isaura. Oh, those happy days! — 
so happy that they defy description. But though 
to Graham the happiest days he had ever known, 
they Avere happier still to Isaura. There Avere 
drawbacks to his happiness, none to hers — draAv- 
backs partly from reasons the Aveight of Avhich 
the reader will estimate later ; partly from rea- 
sons the reader may at once comprehend and as- 
sess. In the sunshine of her joy, all the vi\id 
colorings of Isaura’s artistic tempei'ainent came 
forth, so that Avhat I may call the homely, domes- 
tic Avoman side of her nature hided into shadoAV. 
If, my dear reader, A\hether you be man or Avom- 
an, you have come into familiar contact Avith 
some creature of a genius to which, even assum- 
ing that you yourself have a genius in its ow n 
Avay, you have no special affinities — have you not 
felt shy Avith that creature? HaA'e you not, per- 
haps, felt how intensely you could love that creat- 
ure, and doubted if that creature could possibly 
loA-e you? Noav I think that shyness and that 
disbelief are common Avith either man or Avoman, 
if, hoAvever conscious of superiority in the prose 
of life, he or she recognizes inferiority in the 
poetiy of it. And yet this self-abasement is ex- 
ceedingly mistaken. The poetical kind of genius 
is so grandly indulgent, so inherently deferential, 
boAvs Avith such unaffected modesty to the supe- 
riority in Avhich it fears it may fail (yet seldom 
does fail) — the supenority of common-sense. And 
Avhen we come to Avomen, what marvelous truth 
is conveyed by the Avoman aa’Iio has had no supe- 


74 


THE PARISIANS. 


vior in intellectual gifts among her own sex! 
Corinne, crowned at the Capitol, selects out of 
the wliole world, as the hero of her love, no rival 
poet and enthusiast, but a cold-blooded, sensible 
Englishman. 

Graham Vane, in his strong masculine form 
of intellect — Graham Vane, from whom I hope 
much, if he live to fulfill his rightful career — had, 
not unreasonably, the desire to dominate the life 
of the woman whom he selected as the partner 
of his own. But the life of Isaura seemed to es- 
cape him. If at moments, listening to her, he 
would say to himself, “What a companion! — 
life could never be dull with her” — at other mo- 
ments he would say, “True, never dull, but would 
it be always safe ?” And then comes in that mys- 
terious power of love which crushes all beneath 
its feet, and makes us end self- commune by that 
abject submission of reason, which only murmurs, 
“Better be unhappy with the one you love, than 
happy with one whom you do not.” All such 
self-communes were unknown to Isaura. She 
lived in the bliss of the hour. If Graham could 
have read her heart, he would have dismissed all 
doubt whether he could dominate her life. Could 
a Fate or an angel have said to her, “Choose 
— on one side I promise you the glories of a Ca- 
talini, a Pasta, a Sappho, a De Stael, a George 
Sand — all combined into one immortal name ; 
or, on the other side, the whole heart of the man 
who would estrange himself from you if you had 
such combination of glories” — her answer would 
have brought Graham Vane to her feet ; all scru- 
ples, all doubts would have vanished ; he would 
have exclaimed, with the generosity inherent in 
the higher order of man, “Be glorious, if your 
nature wills it so. Glory enough to me that you 
would have resigned glory itself to become mine.” 
But how is it that men worth a woman’s loving 
become so diffident when they love intensely? 
Even in ordinary cases of love there is so ineffa- 
ble a delicacy in virgin woman, that a man, be 
he how refined soever, feels himself rough and 
rude and coarse in comparison. And while that 
sort of delicacy was pre-eminent in this Italian 
orphan, there came, to increase the humility of 
the man so proud and so confident in himself when 
lie had only men to deal with, the consciousness 
that his intellectual nature was hard and positive 
beside the angel-like purity and the fairy-like 
play of hers. 

There was a strong wish on the part of Mrs. 
Morley to bring about the union of these two. 
She had a great regard and a great admiration 
for both. To her mind, unconscious of all Gra- 
ham’s doubts and prejudices, they were exactly 
suited to each other. A man of intellect so cul- 
tivated as Graham’s, if married to a common- 
place English “Miss,” would surely feel as if 
life had no sunshine and no flowers. The love 
of an Isaura would steep it in sunshine, pave it 
with flowers. Mrs. Morley admitted — all Amer- 
ican Republicans of gentle birth do admit — the 
instincts which lead “ like” to match with “like” 
an equality of blood and race. With all her as- 
sertion of the Rights of Woman, I do not think 
that Mrs. Morley would ever have conceived the 
possibility of consenting that the richest, and 
prettiest, and cleverest girl in the States could 
become the wife of a son of hers if the girl had 
the taint of negro blood, even though shown no- 
where save the slight distinguishing hue of her 


finger-nails. So, bad Isaura’s merits been three- 
fold what they were, and she had been the wealthy 
heiress of a retail grocer, this fair Republican 
would have opposed (more strongly than many 
an English duchess, or at least a Scotch duke, 
would do, the wish of a son) the thought of an 
alliance betAveen Graham Vane and the grocer’s 
daughter! But Isaura was a Cicogna — an off- 
spring of a very ancient and very noble house. 
Disparities of fortune, or mere worldly position, 
Mrs. Morley supremely despised. Here were 
the great parities of alliance — parities in years 
and good looks and mental culture. So, in 
short, she, in the invitation given to them, had 
planned for the union between Isaura and Gra- 
ham. 

To this plan she had an antagonist, whom she 
did not even guess, in Madame Savarin. That 
lady, as much attached to Isaura as was Mrs. 
Morley herself, and still more desirous of seeing 
a girl, brilliant and parentless, transferred from 
the companionship of Signora Venosta to the 
protection of a husband, entertained no belief in 
the serious attentions of Graham Vane. Perhaps 
she exaggerated his worldly advantages — perhaps 
she undeiwalued the warmth of his affections; 
but it was not within the range of her experience, 
confined much to Parisian life, nor in harmony 
with her notions of the frigidity and morgue of 
the English national character, that a rich and 
high-born young man, to whom a great career in 
practical public life \vas predicted, should form 
a matrimonial alliance with a foreign orphan girl 
who, if of gentle birth, had no useful connections, 
would bring no correspondent dot^ and had been 
reared and intended for the profession of the 
stage. She much more feared that the result of 
any attentions on the part of such a man would 
be rather calculated to compromise the oi’phan’s 
name, or at least to mislead her expectations, 
than to secure her the shelter of a wedded home. 
Moreover, she had cherished plans of her own 
for Isaura’s future. Madame Savarin had con- 
ceived for Gustave Ihimeau a friendly regard, 
stronger than that which Mrs. Morley entertain- 
ed for Graham Vane, for it was more motherly. 
Gustave had been familiarized to her sight and 
her thoughts since he had first been launched 
into the literary world under her husband’s au- 
spices ; he had confided to her his mortification 
in his failures, his joy in his successes. His 
beautiful countenance, his delicate health, his 
very infirmities and defects, had endeared him 
to her womanly heart. Isaura was the wife of 
all others who, in Madame Savarin’s opinion, 
was made for Rameau. Her fortune, so trivial 
beside the wealth of the Englishman, would be , 
a competence to Rameau ; then that competence ! 
might swell into vast riches if Isaura succeeded i 
on tlie Stage. She found with extreme displeas- i 
me that Isaura’s mind had become estranged ! 
from the profession to which she had been des- 
tilled, and divined that a deference to the En- 
glishman’s prejudices had something to do with j 
that estrangement. It was not to be expected i 
that a Frenchwoman, wife to a sprightly man of \ 
letters, who had intimate friends and allies in | 
every department of the artistic world, should 
cherish any prejudice whatever against the exer- 
cise of an art in which success achieved riches 
and renown. But she was prejudiced, as most 
Frenchwomen are, against allowing to unmarried 


THE PARISIANS. 


f2irls the same freedom and independence of ac- 
tion that are the rights of women — French wom- 
en — when married. And she would have disap- 
proved the entrance of Isaura on her professional 
career until she could enter it as a wife — the 
wife of an artist — the wife of Gustave Rameau. 

Unaware of the rivalry between these friendlv’’ 
diplomatists and schemers, Graham and Isaura 
glided hourly more and more down the current, 
which as yet ran smooth. No words by which 
love is spoken were exchanged between them; 
in fact, though constantly together, they were 
very rarely, and then but for moments, alone 
with each other. Mrs. Morley artfully schemed 
more than once to give them such opportunities 
for that mutual explanation of heart which, she 
saw, had not yet taken place ; with art more 
practiced and more watchful, Madame Savarin 
contrived to baffle her hostess’s intention. But, 
indeed, neither Graham nor Isaura sought to 
make opportunities for themselves. He, as we 
know, did not deem himself wholly justified in 
uttering the words of love by which a man of 
honor binds himself for life; and she! — what 
girl, pure-hearted and loving truly, does not 
shrink from seeking the opportunities which it 
is for the man to court ? Yet Isaura needed no 
words to tell her that she was loved — no, nor 
even a pressure of the hand, a glance of the eye ; 
site felt it instinctively, mysteriously, by the glow 
of her own being in the presence of her lover. 
She knew that she herself could not so love un- 
less she were beloved. 

Here woman’s wit is keener and truthfuler 
than man’s. Graham, as I have said, did not 
feel confident that he had reached the heart of 
Isaura : he was conscious that he had engaged 
her interests, that he had attracted her fancy; 
but often, when charmed by the joyous play of 
her imagination, he would sigh to himself, “To 
natures so gifted what single mortal can be the 
all in all?” 

They spent the summer mornings in excursions 
round the beautiful neighborhood, dined early, 
and sailed on the calm lake at moonlight. Their 
talk was such as might be expected from lovers 
of books in summer holidays. Savarin was a 
critic by profession ; Graham Vane, if nPt that, 
at least owed such literary reputation as he had 
yet gained to essays in which the rare ciitical 
faculty was conspicuously developed. 

It was pleasant to hear the clash of these two 
minds encountering each other; they differed 
perhaps less in opinions than in the mode by 
which opinions are discussed. The Englishman’s 
range of reading was wider than the French- 
man’s, and his scholarship more accurate ; but 
the Frenchman had a compact neatness of ex- 
pression, a light and nimble grace, whether in 
the advancing or the retreat of his argument, 
which covered deficiencies, and often made them 
appear like merits. Graham was compelled, in- 
deed, to relinquish many of the forces of superior 
knowledge or graver eloquence which, with less 
lively antagonists, he could have brought into the 
field, for the witty sarcasm of Savarin w'ould 
have turned them aside as pedantry or declama- 
tion. But though Graham was neither dry nor 
diffuse, and the happiness at his heart brought 
out the gayety of humor which had been his early 
cliaracteristic, and yet rendered his familiar in- 
tercourse genial and plavful — still there Avas this 
*F 


75 

distinction between his humor and SaA'arin’s wit, 
that in the first there Avas always something ear- 
nest, in the last always something mocking. And 
in criticism Graham seemed ever anxious to 
bring out a latent beauty, CA^en in Aviiters com- 
paratively neglected. Savarin was acutest when 
dragging forth a blemish never before discovered 
in writers universally read. 

Graham did not perhaps notice the profound 
attention Avith Avhich Isaura listened to him in 
these intellectual skirmishes with the more glit- 
tering Parisian. There was this distinction she 
made betAveen him and Savarin : Avhen the last 
spoke she often chimed in Avith some happy sen- 
timent of her OAvn ; but she never interrupted 
Graham — never intimated a dissent from his the- 
ories of art, or the deductions he drew from 
them ; and she would remain silent and thought- 
ful for some minutes Avhen his voice ceased. 
There Avas passing from his mind into hers an 
ambition Avhich she imagined, poor girl, that he 
would be pleased to think he had inspired, and 
Avhich might become a neAv bond of sympathy 
between them. But as yet the ambition Avas 
vague and timid — an idea or a dream to be ful- 
filled in some indefinite future. 

The last night of this short-lived holiday-time 
the party, after staying out on the lake to a later 
hour than usual, stood lingering still on the lawn 
of the villa ; and their host, Avho Avas rather ad- 
dicted to superficial studies of the positive sci- 
ences, including, of course, the most popular of 
all, astronomy, kept his guests politely listening 
to speculatiA'e conjectures on the probable size of 
the inhabitants of Sirius — that very distant and 
very gigantic inhabitant of heaven Avho has led 
philosophers into mortifying reflections upon the 
utter insignificance of our own poor little planet, 
capable of producing nothing greater than Shaks- 
peares and NeAvtons, Aristotles and Ctesars — 
manikins, no doubt, beside intellects proportioned 
to the size of the Avorld in which they flourish. 

As it chanced, Isaura and Graham Avere then 
standing close to each other and a little apart 
from the rest. “It is very strange,” said Gra- 
ham, laughing Ioav, “ hoAv little I care about 
Sirius. He is the sun of some other system, and 
is perhaps not habitable at all, except by Sala- 
manders. He can not be one of the stars Avith 
Avhich I have established familiar acquaintance, 
associated Avith fancies and dreams and hopes, as 
most of us do, for instance, A\ith Hesperus, the 
moon’s harbinger and comrade. But amidst all 
those stars there is one — not Hesperus — which 
has ahvays had, from my childhood, a mysterious 
fascination for me. Knowing as little of astrolo- 
gy as I do of astronomy, when I gaze upon that 
star I become credulously superstitious, and fancy 
it has an influence on my life. Have you, too, 
any favorite star?” 

“Yes,” said Isaura; “and I distinguish it 
now, but I do not even know its name, and iieA er 
Avould ask it.” 

“So like me. I Avould not ATtlgarize my un- 
known source of beautiful illusions by giving it 
the name it takes in technical catalogues. For 
fear of learning that name I never have pointed 
it out to any one before. I too at this moment 
distinguish it apart from all its brotherhood. 
Tell me Avhich is yours.” 

Isaura pointed and explained. The English- 
man Avas startled. By Avhat strange coincidence 


76 


THE PARISIANS. 


could they both have singled out from all the 
host of heaven the same favorite star ? 

“ Cher Vane,” cried Savarin, “ Colonel Morley 
declares that what America is to the terrestrial 
system Sirius is to the heavenly. America is to 
extinguish Europe, and then Sirius is to extin- 
guish the world.” 

“Not for some millions of years ; time to look 
about us,” said the Colonel, gravely. “But I 
certaiply differ from those who maintain that 
Sirius recedes from us. I say that he approach- 
es. The principles of a body so enlightened 
must be those of progress.” Then, addressing 
Graham in English, he added, “ There will be a 
mulling in this fogified planet some day, I predi- 
cate. Sirius is a keener!" 

“I have not imagination lively enough to in- 
terest myself in the destinies of Sirius in connec- 
tion with our planet at a date so remote,” said 
Graham, smiling. Then he added in a whisper 
to Isaura, “My imagination does not carry me 
further than to wonder whether this day twelve- 
month — the 8th of July — we two shall both be 
singling out that same star, and gazing on it as 
now, side by side.” 

This was the sole utterance of that sentiment in 
which the romance of love is so rich that the En- 
glishman addressed to Isaura during those mem- 
orable summer days at Enghien. 


CHAPTER V. 

The next morning the party broke up. Let- 
ters had been delivered both to Savarin and to 
Graham which, even had the day for departure 
not been fixed, would have summoned them 
away. On reading his letter, Savarin’s brow be- 
came clouded. He made a sign to his wife after 
breakfast, and wandered away with her down an 
alley in the little garden. His trouble was of 
that nature which a wife either soothes or aggra- 
vates, according sometimes to her habitual frame 
of mind, sometimes to the mood of temper in 
which she may chance to be — a household trou- 
ble, a pecuniary trouble. 

Savarin was by no means an extravagant man. 
His mode of living, though elegant and hospi- 
table, was modest compared to that of many 
French authors inferior to himself in the fame 
which at Paris brings a very good return in 
francs. But his station itself as the head of a 
pow’erful literary clique necessitated many ex- 
penses which were too congenial to his extreme 
good-nature to be regulated by strict prudence. 
His hand was always open to distressed writers 
and struggling artists, and his sole income w'as 
derived from his pen and a journal in which he 
was chief editor and formerly sole proprietor. 
But that journal had of late not prospered. He 
had sold or pledged a considerable share in the 
proprietorship. He had been compelled also to 
borrow a sura large for him, and the debt, ob- 
tained from a retired bourgeois who lent out his 
moneys “ by way,” he said, “of maintaining an 
excitement and interest in life, ” would in a few 
days become due. The letter was not from that 
creditor, but it was from his publisher, containing 
a very disagreeable statement of accounts, pressing 
for settlement, and declining an otfer of Savarin’s 
for a new book (not yet begun) except upon terms 


that the author valued himself too highly to ac- 
cept. Altogether, the situation was unpleasant. 
There were many times in which Madame Savarin 
presumed to scold her distinguished husband for 
his want of prudence and thrift. But those were 
never the times when scolding could be of no 
use. It could clearly be of no use now. Now 
was the moment to cheer and encourage him, to 
reassure him as to his own undiminished powers 
and popularity, for he talked dejectedly of him- 
self as obsolete and passing out of fashion ; to 
convince him also of the impossibility that the 
ungrateful publisher whom Savarin’s more brill- 
iant successes had enriched could encounter the 
odium of hostile proceedings ; and to remind 
him of all the authors, all the artists, whom he, 
in their earlier difficulties, had so liberally as- 
sisted, and from whom a sum sufficing to pay 
off the bourgeois creditor when the day arrived 
could now be honorably asked and would be 
readily contributed. In this last suggestion the 
homely prudent good sense of Madame Savarin 
failed her. She did not comprehend that deli- 
cate pride of honor which, with all his Parisian 
frivolities and cynicism, dignified the Parisian 
man of genius. Savarin could not, to save his 
neck from a rope, have sent round the begging- 
hat to friends whom he had obliged. Madame 
Savarin was one of those women with large- 
lobed ears, who can be wonderfully affectionate, 
wonderfully sensible; admirable wives and moth- 
ers, and yet are deficient in artistic sympathies 
with artistic natures. Still, a really good hon- 
est wife is such an incalculable blessing to her 
lord, that, at the end of the talk in the solitary 
alUe, this man of exquisite finesse, of the unde- 
finable high-bred temperament, and, alas! the 
painfully morbid susceptibility, which belong to 
the genuine artistic character, emerged into the 
open sun-lit lawn with his crest uplifted, his lip 
curved upward in its joyous mockery, and per- 
fectly persuaded that somehow or other he should 
put down the offensive publisher, and pay off the 
offending creditor when the day for payment 
came. Still he had judgment enough to know 
that to do this he must get back to Paris, and 
could not dawdle away precious hours in dis- 
cussing the principles of poetry with Graham 
Vane. 

There was only one thing, apart from “the 
begging-hat,” in which Savarin dissented from 
his wife. She suggested his starting a new jour- 
nal in conjunction with Gustave Rameau, upon 
whose genius and the expectations to be formed 
from it (here she was tacitly thinking of Isaura 
wedded to Rameau, and more than a Malibran 
on the stage) she insisted vehemently. Savarin 
did not thus estimate Gustave Rameau — thought 
him a clever, promising young writer in a very 
bad school of writing, who might do well some 
day or other. But that a Rameau could help a 
Savarin to make a fortune! No; at that idea 
he opened his eyes, patted his wife’s shoulder, 
and called her '‘'"enfant" 

Graham’s letter was fiom M. Renard, and ran 
thus : 

“ Monsieur, — I had the honor to call at your 
apartment this morning, and I Avrite this line to 
the address given to me by your concierge to say 
that I have been foi-tunate enough to ascertain 
that the relation of the missing lady is noAV at 


THE PARISIANS. 


Paris. I shall hold myself in readiness to attend 
your summons. — Deign to accept, monsieur, the 
assurance of my profound consideration. 

“ J. Renard.” 

This communication sufficed to put Graham 
into very high spirits. Any thing that promised 
success to his research seemed to deliver his 
thoughts from a burden and his will from a fet- 
ter. Perhaps in a few days he might frankly 
and honorably say to Isaura words which would 
justify his retaining longer, and pressing more 
ardently, the delicate hand which trembled in his 
as they took leave. 

On arriving at Paris, Graham dispatched a 
note to M. Renard requesting to see him, and 
received a brief line in reply that M. Renard 
feared he should be detained on other and im- 
portant business till the evening, but hoped to 
call at eight o’clock. A few minutes before that 
hour he entered Graham’s apartment. 

“ You have discovered the uncle of Louise Du- 
val !” exclaimed Graham ; “of course you mean 
M. de Mauleon, and he is at Paris?” 

“True so far, monsieur; but do not be too 
sanguine as to the results of the information I 
can give you. Permit me, as briefly as possible, 
to state the circumstances. When you acquaint- 
ed me with the fact that M. de Mauleon was the 
uncle of Louise Duval, I told you that I was not 
without hopes of finding him out, though so long 
absent from Paris. I will now explain why. 
Some months ago one of my colleagues engaged 
in the political department (which I am not) was 
sent to Lyons, in consequence of some suspicions 
conceived by the loyal authorities there of a plot 
against the Emperor’s life. The suspicions were 
groundless, the plot a mare’s-nest. But my col- 
league’s attention was especially drawn toward a 
man, not mixed up with the circumstances from 
M'hich a plot had been inferred, but deemed in 
some way or other a dangerous enemy to the 
government. Ostensibly, he exercised a modest 
and small calling as a sort of courtier or agent de 
change ; but it was noticed that certain persons 
familiarly frequenting his apartment, or to whose 
houses he used to go at night, were disaffected to 
the government — not by any means of the lowest 
rank — some of them rich malcontents who had 
been devoted Orleanists ; others, disappointed as- 
pirants to office or the ‘cross ;’ one or two well- 
born and opulent fanatics dreaming of another 
republic. Certain very able articles in the jour- 
nals of the excitable Midi, though bearing anoth- 
er signature, were composed or dictated by this 
man — articles evading the censure and penalties 
of the law, but very mischievous in their tone. 
All Avho had come into familiar communication 
wdth this person were impressed with a sense of 
his powers ; and also with a vague belief that he 
belonged to a higher class in breeding and edu- 
cation than that of a petty agent de change. My 
colleague set himself to watch the man, and took 
occasions of business at his little office to enter 
into talk with him. Not by personal appearance, 
but by voice, he came to a conclusion that the 
man was not wholly a stranger to him ; a pecul- 
iar voice with a slight Norman breadth of pro- 
nunciation, though a Parisian accent; a voice 
very low, yet very distinct — very masculine, yet 
very gentle. My colleague was puzzled, till late 
one evening he obsen ed the man coming out of 


77 

the house of one of these rich malcontents, the 
rich malcontent himself accompanying him. My 
colleague, availing himself of the dimness of light, 
as the two passed into a lane which led to the 
agent’s apartment, contrived to keep close be- 
hind and listen to their conversation. But of 
this he heard nothing — only, when at the end of 
the lane, the rich man turned abruptly, shook his 
companion warmly by the hand, and parted from 
him, saying, ‘Never fear; all shall go right 
with you, my dear Victor.’ At the sound of 
that name ‘Victor,’ my colleague’s memories, be- 
fore so confused, became instantaneously clear. 
Previous to entering our service, he had been in 
the horse business — a votary of the turf ; as such 
he had often seen the brilliant ^sportman,’ Victor 
de Mauleon ; sometimes talked to him. Yes, 
that was the voice — the slight Norman intona- 
tion (Victor de Mauleon ’s father had it strongly, 
and Victor had passed some of his early child- 
hood in Normandy), the subdued modulation of 
speech w'hich had made so polite the offense to 
men, or so winning the courtship to women — 
that was Victor de Mauleon. But why there in 
that disguise? What was his real business and 
object ? My confrhre had no time allowed to him 
to prosecute such inquiries. Whether Victor or 
the rich malcontent had observed him at their 
heels, and feared he might have overheard their 
words, I know not; but the next day appeared 
in one of the popular journals circulating among 
the ouvriers, a paragraph stating that a Paris spy 
had been seen at Lyons, warning all honest men 
against his machinations, and containing a toler- 
ably accurate de.scription of his person. And that 
very day, on venturing forth, my estimable col- 
league suddenly found himself hustled by a fero- 
cious throng, from whose hands he was with 
great difficulty rescued by the municipal guard. 
He left Lyons that night ; and for recompense 
of his services received a sharp reprimand from 
his chief. He had committed the worst offense 
in our profession, trap de zele. Having only 
heard the outlines of this story from another, I 
repaired to my cpn/rh'e, after my last interview 
with monsieur, and learned what I now tell you 
from his own lips. As he was not in my branch 
of the service, I could not order him to return to 
Lyons ; and I doubt whether his chief would 
have allowed it. But I went to Lyons myself, 
and there ascertained that our supposed Vicomte 
had left that town for Paris some months ago, 
not long after the adventure of my colleague. 
The man bore a very good chai'acter generally — 
was said to be very honest and inoffensive ; and 
the notice taken of him by persons of higher rank 
was attributed generally to a respect for his tal- 
ents, and not on account of any sympathy in po- 
litical opinions. I found that the confrere men- 
tioned, and who alone could identify M. de Mau- 
leon in the disguise which the Vicomte had as- 
sumed, was absent on one of those missions 
abroad in which he is chiefly employed. I had 
to wait for his return, and it was only the day 
before yesterday that I obtained the following 
particulars : M. de Mauleon bears the same 
name as he did at Lyons — that name is Jean 
Lebeau ; he exercises the ostensible profession 
of ‘ a letter-writer,’ and a sort of adviser on busi- 
ness among the workmen and petty bourgeoisie, 
and he nightly frequents the Cafe Jean Jacques, 
Rue , Faubourg Montmartre. It is not yet 


78 


THE PAlilSlANS. 


({uite half past eight, and, no doubt, you could see 
him at the caf^ this very night, if you thought 
proper to go.” 

“ Excellent ! I will go ! Describe him !” 

“ Alas ! that is exactly what I can not do at 
present. For after hearing what I now tell you, 

I put the same request you do to my colleague, 
when, before he could answer me, he was sum- 
moned to the bureau of his chief, promising to 
return and give me the requisite description. 
He did not return. And I find that he was com- 
pelled, on quitting his chief, to seize the first train 
starting for Lille upon an important political in- 
vestigation which brooked no delay. He will 
be back in a few days, and then monsieur shall 
have the description.” 

“Nay: I think 1 wilLseize time by the fore- 
lock, and try my chance to-night. If the man 
be really a conspirator, and it looks likely enough, 
who knows but what he may see quick reason to 
take alarm and vanish from Paris at any hour ? 

Cafe Jean Jacques, Rue ; I will go. Stay ; 

you have seen Victor de Mauleon in his youth : 
what was he like then ?” 

“ Tall — slender — but broad-shouldered — very 
erect — carrying his head high — a profusion of ! 
dark curls — a small black mustache — fair clear [ 
complexion — light-colored eyes with dark lashes 
—fort bel homme. But he will not look like that 
now. ” 

“ His present age?” 

“Forty-seven or forty-eight. But before you 
go, I must beg you to consider well what you are j 
about. It is evident that M. de Mauleon has j 
some strong reason, whatever it be, for merging : 
his identity in that of Jean Lebeau. I presume, I 
therefore, that you could scarcely go up to M. I 
Lebeau, when you have discovered him, and say, | 
‘ Pray, M. le Vicomte, can you give me some j 
tidings of your niece, Louise Duval?’ If you 
thus accosted him, you might possibly bring some i 
danger on yourself, but you would certainly gain 
no information from him.” 

“ True.” 

“On the other hand, if you make his acquaint- 
ance as M. Lebeau, how can you assume him to 
know any thing about Louise Duval ?” 

'•'‘Parbleul M. lienard, you try to toss me 
aside on both honis of the dilemma ; but it 
seems to me that, if I once make his acquaint- 
ance as M. Lebeau, I might gradually and cau- 
tiously feel my way as to the best mode of put- I 
ting the question to which I seek reply. I sup- 
I»ose, too, that the man must be in very poor cir- 
cumstances to adopt so humble a calling, and 
that a small sum of money may smooth all diffi- 
culties.” 

“ I am not so sure of that,” said M. Renard, I 
thoughtfully ; “ but grant that money may do ; 
so, and grant also that the Vicomte, being a i 
needy man, has become a very unscrupulous one 
— is there any thing in your motives for discov- 
ering Louise Duval which might occasion you 
trouble and annoyance, if it were divined by a 
needy and unscrapulous man ? — any thing which 
might give him a power of threat or exaction ? 
Mind, I am not asking you to tell me any secret 
you have reasons for concealing, but I suggest 
that it might be prudent if you did not let M. 
Lebeau know your real name and rank — if, in 
short, you could follow his example, and adopt a ' 
disguise. But no ; when I think of it, you would 


doubtless be so unpracticed in the art of disguise 
that he would detect you at once to be other than 
you seem ; and if suspecting you of spying into 
his secrets, and if those secrets be really of a po- 
litical nature, your very life might not be safe.” 

“ Thank you for your hint — the disguise is an 
excellent idea, and combines amusement with 
precaution. That this Victor de Mauleon must 
be a very unprincipled and dangerous man is, I 
think, abundantly clear. Granting that he was 
innocent of all design of robbery in the afiair of 
the jewels, still, the offense which he did own — 
that of admitting himself at night by a false key 
into the rooms of a wife, whom he sought to sur- 
prise or terrify into dishonor — was a villainous 
action ; and his present course of life is sufficient- 
ly mysterious to warrant the most unfavorable 
supposition. Besides, there is another motive for 
concealing my name from him : 3 011 say that he 
once had a duel with a Vane, who was very prob- 
ably my father, and I have no wish to expose 
myself to the chance of his turning up in London 
some day, and seeking to renew there the ac- 
quaintance that I had courted at Paris. As for 
my skill in playing any part I may assume, do 
not fear. I am no novice in that. In rny 3'oung- 
er days I was thought clever in private theatric- 
als, especially in the transfonnations of appear- 
ance which belong to light comedy and farce. 
Wait a few minutes, and )’ou shall see.” 

Graham then retreated into his bedroom, and 
in a few minutes reappeared so changed thaf 
Renard at first glance took him for a stranger. 
He had doffed his dress — which habitually, when 
in capitals, was characterized b}' the quiet, in- 
definable elegance that to a man of the great 
world, high-bred and young, seems “to the man- 
ner born” — for one of those coarse suits which 
Englishmen are wont to wear in their travels, 
and by which the}' are represented in French or 
German caricatures — loose jacket of tweed, with 
redundant pockets, waistcoat to match, short 
dust-colored trowsers. He had combed his hair 
straight over his forehead, which, as I have said 
somewhere before, appeared in itself to alter the 
character of his countenance, and, without an}' 
resort to paints or cosmetics, had somehow or 
other given to the expression of his face an im- 
pudent, low-bred expression, with a glass screwed 
on to his right eye; such a look as a cockney 
journeyman, wishing to pass for a “ swell” about 
town, may cast on a seiwant-maid in the pit of a 
suburban theatre. 

“Will it do, old fellow?” he exclaimed, in a 
rollicking, swaggering tone of voice, speaking 
French with a villainous British accent. 

“Perfectly,” said Renard, laughing. “I of- 
fer my compliments, and if ever you are ruined, 
monsieur, I will promise you a place in our po- 
lice. Only one caution — take care not to overdo 
your part. ” 

“ Right. A quarter to nine — I’m off.” 


CHAPTER VI. 

There is generally a brisk exhilaration of 
spirits in the return to any .special amusement or 
light accomplishment as.sociated with the pleas- 
ant memories of earlier youth ; and remarkably 
so, I believe, when the amusement or accom- 


THE PARISIANS. 


79 


plishment has been that of the amateur stage- 
player. Certainly I have known persons of very 
grave pursuits, of very dignified character and 
position, who seem to regain the vivacity of boy- 
hood when disguising look and voice for a part 
in some drawing-room comedy or charade. I 
might name statesmen of solemn repute rejoicing 
to raise and to join in a laugh at their expense 
in such travesty of their habitual selves. 

The reader must not, therefore, be surprised, 
nor, I trust, deem it inconsistent with the more 
serious attributes of Graham’s character, if the 
Englishman felt the sort of joyous excitement I 
describe, as, in his way to the Cafe Jean Jacques, 
he meditated the role he had undertaken ; and 
the joyousness was heightened beyond the mere 
holiday sense of humoristic pleasantry by the san- 
guine hope that much to affect his lasting happi- 
ness might result from the success of the object 
for which his disguise was assumed. 

It was just twenty minutes past nine when he 
arrived at the Cafe Jean Jctcques. He dismiss- 
ed the fiacre and entered. The apartment de- 
voted to customers comprised tw’o large rooms. 
The first was the cafe properly speaking; the 
second, opening on it, was the billiard - room. 
Conjecturing that he should probably find the 
person of whom he was in quest employed at the 
billiard-table, Graham passed thither at once. A 
tall man, who might be seven-and-forty, with a 
long black beard slightly grizzled, was at play 
with a young man of perhaps twenty-eight, who 
gave him odds — as better players of twenty-eight 
ought to give odds to a player, though originally 
of equal force, whose eye is not so quick, whose 
hand is not so steady, as they w’ere twenty years 
ago. Said Graham to himself, “The bearded 
man is my Vicomte.” He called for a cup of 
coffee, and seated himself on a bench at the end 
of the room. 

The bearded man was far behind in the game. 
It was his turn to play ; the balls were placed in 
the most awkward position for him. Graham 
himself was a fair billiard-player, both in the En- 
glish and the French game. He said to himself, 
“No man who can make a cannon there should 
accept odds.” The bearded man made a can- 
non; the bearded man continued to make can- 
nons ; the bearded man did not stop till he had 
won the game. The gallery of spectators was 
enthusiastic. Taking care to speak in very bad, 
very English French, Graham expressed to one 
of the enthusiasts seated beside him his admira- 
tion of the bearded man’s playing, and ventured 
to ask if the bearded man were a professional or 
an amateur player. 

“ Monsieur,” replied the enthusiast, taking a 
short cutty-pipe from his mouth, “it is an ama- 
teur, who has been a great player in his day, and 
is so proud that he always takes less odds than 
he ought of a younger man. It is not once in a 
month that he comes out as he has done to-night; 
but to-night he has steadied his hand. He has 
had six petits verresj 

“ Ah, indeed ! Do you know his name ?” 

“I should think so;* he buried my father, my 
two aunts, and my wife.” 

“ Buried ?” said Graham, more and more Brit- 
ish in his accent ; “I don’t understand.” 

“Monsieur, you are English.” 

“ I confess it.” 

. “And a stranger to the Faubourg Montmartre.” 


“True.” 

“Or you would have heard of M. Giraud, the 
liveliest member of the State Company for con- 
ducting funerals. They are going to play La 
Poule. ” 

Much disconcerted, Graham retreated into the 
cafe, and seated himself hap-hazard at one of the 
small tables. Glancing round the room, he saw 
no one in whom he could conjecture the once 
brilliant Vicomte. 

The company appeared to him sufficiently de- 
cent, and especially what may be called local. 
There were some blouses drinking wine, no doubt 
of the cheapest and thinnest; some in rough, 
coarse dresses, drinking beer. These were evi- 
dently English, Belgian, or German artisans. 
At one table four young men, who looked like 
small journeymen, wei e playing cards. At three 
other tables men older, better dressed, probably 
shop-keepers, were playing dominoes. Graham 
scrutinized these last, but among them all could 
detect no one corresponding to his ideal of the 
Vicomte de Mauleon. “Probably,” thought he, 
“I am too late, or perhaps he will not be here 
this evening. At all events, I will wait a quar- 
ter of an hour.” Then, the gargon approaching 
his table, he deemed it necessary to call for some- 
thing, and, still in strong English accent, asked 
for lemonade and an evening journal. The gar- 
gon nodded, and went his way. A monsieur at 
the round table next his own politely handed to 
him the Galignani, saying in very good En- 
glish, though unmistakably the good English of 
a Frenchman, “The English journal, at your 
service.” 

Graham bowed his head, accepted the Ga- 
lignani, and inspected his courteous neighbor. 
A more respectable-looking man no Englishman 
could see in an English country town. He wore 
an unpretending flaxen wig, with limp whiskers 
that met at the chin, and might originally have 
been the same color as the wig, but were now of 
a pale gray — no beard, no mustache. He was 
dressed with the scrupulous cleanliness of a sober 
citizen — a high white neckcloth, with a large 
old-fashioned pin, containing a little knot of hair, 
covered with glass or crystal, and bordered with 
a black frame-work, in which were inscribed let- 
ters — evidently a mourning-pin, hallowed to the 
memory of lost spouse or child — a man who, in 
England, might be the mayor of a cathedral town, 
at least the town-clerk. He seemed suffering 
from some infirmity of vision, for he wore green 
spectacles. The expression of his face was very 
mild and gentle ; apparently he was about sixty 
years old — somewhat more. 

Graham took kindly to his neighbor, insomuch 
that, in return for the Galignani, he offered him 
a cigar, lighting one himself. 

His neighbor refused politely. 

‘ ‘ Merci ! I never smoke — never ; inon medecin 
forbids it. If I could be tempted, it would be by 
an English cigar. Ah, how you English beat 
us in all things — your ships, your iron, your tabac 
— which you do not grow ! ” 

This speech, rendered literally as we now ren- 
der it, may give the idea of a somewhat vulgar 
speaker. But there was something in the man’s 
manner, in his smile, in his courtesy, which did 
not strike Graham as vulgar ; on the contrary, 
he thought within himself, “How instinctive to 
all Frenchmen good-breeding is !” 


80 


THE PARISIANS. 


Before, however, Graham liad time to explain 
to his amiable neighbor the politico-economical 
principle according to which England, growing 
no tobacco, bad tobacco mnch better than France, 
which did grow it, a rosy middle-aged monsieur 
made his appearance, saying hurriedly to Gra- 
ham’s neighbor, “ I’m afraid I’m late, but there 
is still a good half hour before us if you will give 
me my revenge.” 

‘ ‘ Willingly, M. Georges. Garmon, the domi- 
noes.” 

“ Have you been playing at billiards ?” asked 
M. Georges. 

“ Yes, two games.” 

“With success ?” ^ 

“I won the first, and lost the second through 
the defect of my eye-sight ; the game depended 
on a stroke w'hich would have been easy to an in- 
fant — I missed it.” 

Here the dominoes arrived, and M. Georges 
began shuffling them ;• the other turned to Gra- 
ham and asked politely if he understood the 
game. 

“A little, but not enough to comprehend why 
it is said to require so much skill.” 

“It is chiefly an affair of memory with me ; 
but M. Georges, my opponent, has the talent of 
combination, which I have not.” 

“Nevertheless,” replied M. Georges, gruffly, 
“ you are not easily beaten ; it is for you to play 
first, M. Lebeau.” 

Graham almost started. Was it possible ! 
This mild, limp-Avhiskered, flaxen-wigged man, 
Victor de Mauleon, the Don Juan of his time; 
the last person in the room he should have guess- 
ed. Yet, now examining his neighbor with more 
attentive eye, he wondered at his stupidity in not 
having recognized at once the ci-devant gentil- 
homme^ and heau gargon. It happens frequently 
that our imagination plays us this trick ; we form 
to ourselves an idea of some one eminent for good 
or for evil — a poet, a statesman, a general, a mur- 
derer, a swindler, a thief : the man is before us, 
and our ideas have gone into so different a groove 
that he does not excite a suspicion. We are told 
who he is, and immediately detect a thousand 
things that ought to have proved his identity. 

Looking thus again with i-ectified vision at the 
false Lebeau, Graham observed an elegance and 
delicacy of feature which might, in youth, have 
made the countenance very handsome, and ren- 
dered it still good-looking, nay, prepossessing. 
He now noticed, too, the slight Norman accent, 
its native harshness of breadth subdued into the 
modulated tones which bespoke the habits of pol- 
ished society. Above all, as M. Lebeau moved 
his dominoes with one hand, not shielding his 
pieces with the other (as M. Geoi'ges warily did), 
but allowing it to rest carelessly on the table, he 
detected the hands of the French aristocrat ; 
hands that had never done work — never (like 
those of the English noble of equal birth) been 
embrowned or frecked, or roughened or enlarged 
by early practice in athletic sports ; but hands 
seldom seen save in the higher circles of Parisian 
life — partly perhaps of hereditary formation, part- 
ly owing their texture to great care begun in early 
youth, and continued mechanically in after-life — 
with long taper fingers and polished nails ; wdiite 
and delicate as those of a woman, but not slight, 
not feeble ; nervous and sinewy as those of a 
practiced swordsman. 


Graham watched the play, and Lebeau good- 
naturedly explained to him its complications as it 
proceeded ; though the explanation, diligently at- 
tended to by M. Georges, lost Lebeau the game. 

The dominoes were again shuffled, and during 
that operation M. Georges said, “By-the-way, 
M. Lebeau, you promised to find me a locataire 
for my second floor ; have you succeeded ?” 

“Not yet. Perhaps you had better advertise 
in Les P elites Affiches. You ask too much for 
the habitues of this neighborhood — one hundred 
francs a month.” 

“But the lodging is furnished, and well too, 
and has four rooms. One hundred francs are 
not much.” 

A thought flashed upon Graham — “Pardon, 
monsieur,” he said, “have you an appartement 
de gargon to let furnished ?” 

“Yes, monsieur, a charming one. Are you 
in search of an apartment ?” 

“I have some idea of taking one, but only by 
the month. I am but just amved at Paiis, and 
I have business which may keep me here a few 
weeks. I do but require a bedroom and a small 
cabinet, and the rent must be modest. I am not 
a milord” 

“lam sure we could arrange, monsieur,” said 
M. Georges, “though I could not well divide 
my logement. But one hundred francs a month 
is not much !” 

“I fear it is more than I can afford ; however, 
if you will give me your address, I will call and 
see the rooms — say the day after to-morrow. 
Between this and then I expect letters which 
may more clearly decide my movements.” 

“If the apartments suit you,” said M. Lebeau, 
“you will at least be in the house of a very hon- 
est man, which is more than can be said of ev- 
ery one who lets furnished apartments. The 
house, too, has a concierge, with a handy wife 
who will arrange your rooms and provide you 
with coffee — or tea, which you English prefer — 
if you breakfast at home.” 

Here M. Georges handed a card to Graham, 
and asked what hour he would call. 

“About twelve, if that hour is convenient,” 
said Graham, rising. “ I presume there is a res- 
taurant in the neighborhood where I could dine 
reasonably. ” 

“ Je crois hien — half a dozen. I can recom- 
mend to you one wdiere you can dine en prince 
for thirty sous. And if you are at Paris on busi- 
ness, and want any letters written in private, I 
can also recommend to you my friend here, M. 
Lebeau. Ay, and on aflairs his advice is as good 
as a lawyer’s, and his fee a bagatelle” 

“Don’t believe all that M. Georges so flatter- 
ingly says of me,” put in M. Lebeau, with a mod- 
est half smile, and in English. “I should tell 
you that I, like yourself, am recently arrived at 
Paris, having bought the business and good-will 
of my predecessor in the apartment I occupy ; 
and it is only to the respect due to his anteced- 
ents, and on the score of a few letters of recom- 
mendation which I bring from Lyons, that I can 
attribute the confidence shown to me, a stranger 
in this neighborhood. Still I have some knowl- 
edge of the world, and I am always glad if I can 
be of service to the English. I love the English 
he said this with a sort of melancholy earnest- 
ness which seemed sincere, and then "added in 
a more careless tone, “I have met with much 



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THE PARISIANS. 


81 


kindness from them in the course of a checkered 
life.” 

“ You seem a very good fellow — in fact, a reg- 
ular trump, M. Lebeau,” replied Graham, in the 
same language. “ Give me your address. To 
say truth, I am a very poor French scholar, as' 
you must have seen, and am awfully bother-headed 
how to manage some correspondence on matters 
with which I am intrusted by my employer, so 
that it is a lucky chance which has brought me 
acquainted with you.” 

M. Lebeau inclined his head gracefully, and 
drew from a very neat morocco case a card, 
which Graham took and pocketed. Then he 
paid for his coffee and lemonade, and returned 
home well satisfied with the evening’s adventure. 

» ■ ■ 

CHAPTER VII. 

The next mortnng Graham sent for M. Re- 
nard, and consulted Avith that experienced func- 
tionaiy as to the details of the plan of action 
which he had revolved during the hours of a 
sleepless night. 

“In conformity with your advice,” said he, 
“not to expose myself to the chance of future 
annoyance, by confiding to a man so dangerous 
as the false Lebeau my name and address, I pro- 
pose to take the lodging offered to me, as Mr. 
Lamb, an attorney’s clerk, commissioned to get 
in certain debts, and transact other matters of 
business, on behalf of his employer’s clients. I 
suppose there will be no difficulty with the police 
in this change of name, now that passports for 
the English are not necessary ?” 

“ Certainly not. You wul have no trouble in 
that respect. ” 

‘ ‘ I shall thus be enabled very naturally to im- 
prove acquaintance with the professional letteiv 
writer, and find an easy opportunity to introduce 
the name of Louise Duval. My chief difficulty, 
I fear, not being a practical actor, will be to keep 
up consistently the queer sort of language I have 
adopted, both in French and in English. I have 
too sharp a critic in a man so consuqimate him- 
self in stage trick and disguise as M. Lebeau, not 
to feel the necessity of getting through my role 
as quickly as I can. Meanwhile, can you recom- 
mend me to some magasin where I can obtain a 
suitable change of costume ? I can’t always wear 
a traveling suit, and I must buy linen of coarser 
texture than mine, and with the initials of my 
new name inscribed on it.” 

“ Quite right to study such details ; I will in- 
troduce you to a magasin near the Temple, where 
you will find all you want.” 

“Next, have you any friends or relations in 
the proA'inces unknown to M. Lebeau, to whom 
I might be supposed to write about debts or busi- 
ness matters, and from Avhom I might have re- 
plies ?” 

“I Avill think over it, and manage that for you 
very easily. Your letters shall find their Avay to 
me, and I Avill dictate the ansAvers.” 

After some further conA^ersation on that busi- 
ness, M. Renard made an appointment to meet 
Graham at a caf^ near the Temple later in the 
afternoon, and took his departure. 

Graham then informed his laquais de place 
that, though he kept on his lodgings, he Avas go- 


ing into the country for a few days, and should 
not Avant the man’s services till he returned. He 
therefore dismissed and paid him oft' at once, so 
that the laquais might not observe, Avhen he quit- 
ted his rooms the next day, that he took with 
him no change of clothes, etc. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

Graham Vane has been for some days in the 
apartment rented of M. Georges. He takes it in 
the name of Mr. Lamb — a name wisely cbosen, 
less common than Thomson and Smith,* less like- 
ly to be supposed an assumed name, yet common 
enough not to be able easily to trace it to any 
special family. He appears, as he had proposed, 
in the character of an agent employed by a solic- 
itor in London to execute sundry commissions, 
and to collect certain outstanding debts. There 
is no need to mention the name of the solicitor ; 
if there Aveie, he could gi\'e the name of his own 
solicitor, to Avhose discretion he could trust im- 
plicitly. He dresses and acts up to his assumed 
character with the skill of a man who, like the il- 
lustrious Charles Fox, has, though in private rep- 
resentations, practiced the stage -play in which 
Demosthenes said the triple art of oratory con- 
sisted — who has seen a great deal of the world, 
and has that adaptability of intellect which 
knowledge of the world lends to one Avho is so 
thoroughly in earnest as to his end that he agrees 
to be sportive as to his means. 

The kind of language he employs Avhen speak- 
ing English to Lebeau is that suited to the role 
of a dapper young underling of vulgar mind ha- 
bituated to vulgar companionships. I feel it due, 
if not to Graham himself, at least to the memory 
of the dignified orator Avhose name be inherits, 
so to modify and soften the hardy style of that 
peculiar diction in which he disguises his birtli 
and disgraces his culture, that it is only here and 
there that I can Aenture to indicate the general 
tone of it. But in order to supply my deficien- 
cies therein, the reader has only to call to mind 
the forms of phraseology Avhich polite novelists 
in vogue, especially young lady novelists, ascribe 
to well-born gentlemen, and more emphatically 
to those in the higher ranks of the Peerage. No 
doubt Graham in his capacity of critic bad been 
compelled to read, in order to revieAv, those con- 
tributions to refined literature, and had familiar- 
ized himself to a vein of conversation abounding 
with “sAvell,” and “stunner,” and “aAvfully jol- 
ly,” in its libel on manners and outrage on taste. 

He has attended nightly the Cafe Jean 
Jacques; he has improAed acquaintance Avith M. 
Georges and M. Lebeau ; he has played at bill- 
iards, he has played at dominoes, Avith the latter. 
He has been much surprised at the unimpeacha- 
ble honesty which M. Lebeau has exhibited in 
both these games. In billiards, indeed, a man 
can not cheat except by disguising his strength ; 
it is much the same in dominoes — it is skill com- 
bined with luck, as in whist ; but in whist there 
are modes of cheating which dominoes do not 
allow — you can’t mark a domino as you can a 
card. It was perfectly clear to Graham that M. 
Lebeau did not gain a livelihood by billiards or 
dominoes at the Cafe Jean Jacques. In the for- 
mer he Avas not only a fair but a generous player. 


82 


THE PARISIANS. 


He played exceedingly well, despite his specta- 
cles ; but he gave, with something of a French- 
man’s lofty fanfaronnade^ larger odds to his ad- 
versary than liis play justified. In dominoes, 
where such odds could not well be given, he in- 
sisted on playing such small stakes as two or 
three francs miglit cover. In short, M. Lebeau 
])uzzled Graham. All about M. Lebeau, his 
manner, his talk, was irreproachable, and baffled 
suspicion ; except in this, Graham gradually dis- 
covered that the caf^ had a quasi political char- 
acter. Listening to talkers round him, he over- 
heard much that might well have shocked the 
notions of a moderate Liberal ; much that held 
in disdain the objects to w hich, in 1869, an En- 
glish Radical directed his aspirations. Vote by 
ballot, universal suffrage, etc. — such objects the 
French had already attained. By the talkers at 
the Caf^ Jean Jacques they were deemed to be 
the tricky contrivances of tyranny. In fact, the 
talk was more scornful of what Englishmen un- 
derstand by radicalism or democracy than Gra- 
ham ever heard from the lips of an ultra-Tory. 
It assumed a strain of philosophy far above the 
vulgar squabbles of ordinary party politicians — a 
philosophy which took for its fundamental prin- 
ciples the destruction of religion and of private 
property. These two objects seemed dependent 
the one on the other. The philosophers of the 
Jean Jacques held with that expounder of Inter- 
nationalism, Eugene Dupont, “ Nous ne voulons 
plus de religion, car les religions etouffent I’intel- 
ligence.”* Now and then, indeed, a dissentient 
voice was raised as to the existence of a Supreme 
Being, but, with one exception, it soon sunk into 
silence. No voice was raised in defense of pri- 
vate property. These sages appeared for the 
most part to belong to the class of ouvriers or 
artisans. Some of them were foreigners — Bel- 
gian, German, English ; all seemed w'ell off for 
their calling. Indeed, they must have had com- 
paratively high wages, to judge by their dress and 
the money they spent on regaling themselves. 
The language of several was well chosen, at times 
eloquent. Some brought with them women who 
seemed respectable, and who often joined in the 
conversation, especially when it turned upon the 
law of marriage as a main obstacle ^to all person- 
al liberty and social improvement. If this was a 
subject on which the women did not all agree, 
still they discussed it, without prejudice and with 
admirable sang-froid. Yet many of them looked 
like w'ives and mothers. Now and then a young 
journeyman brought with him a young lady of 
more doubtful aspect, but such a couple kept 
aloof from the others. Now and then, too, a 
man evidently of higher station than that of ou- 
vrier^ and who was received by the philosophers 
with courtesy and respect, joined one of the ta- 
bles and ordered a bowl of punch for general par- 
ticipation. In such occasional visitors, Graham, 
still listening, detected a writer of the press ; now 
and then a small artist, or actor, or medical stu- 
dent. Among the hnhitu^s there was one man, 
an ouvrier, in whom Graham could not help feel- 
ing an interest. He was called Monnier, some- 
times more familiarly Armand, his baptismal ap- 
pellation. This man had a bold and honest ex- 
pression of countenance. He talked like one 


* Discours par Eugene Dupont h la Cloture du Con- 
gress de Bruxelles, September 3, 1868. 


who, if he had not read much, had thought much 
on the subjects he loved to discuss. He argued 
against the capital of em})loyers quite as ably as 
Mr. Mill has argued against the rights of proper- 
ty in land. He was still more eloquent against 
the laws of marriage and heritage. But his was 
the one voice not to be silenced in favor of a Su- 
preme Being. He had at least the courage of his 
opinions, and was always thoroughly in earnest. 
M. Lebeau seemed to know this man, and honor- 
ed him with a nod and a smile, when passing by 
him to the table he generally occupied. This fa- 
miliarity with a man of that class, and of opin- 
ions so extreme, excited Graham’s curiosity. 
One evening he said to Lebeau, “A queer fellow 
that you have just nodded to.” 

“ How so?” 

“Well, he has queer notions.” 

“Notions shared, I believe, by many of your 
countrymen ?” 

“ I should think not many. Those poor sim- 
pletons yonder may have caught them from their 
French fellow- workmen, but I don’t think that 
even the gobemouches in our National Reform So- - 
ciety open their mouths to swallow such wasps.” 

“Yet I believe the association to which most 
of those ouvriers belong had its origin in En- 
gland. ” 

• “ Indeed ! what association ?” 

“The International.” 

“Ah, I have heard of that.” 

Lebeau turned his green spectacles full on Gra- 
ham’s face as he said, slowly, “And what do you 
think of it ?” 

Graham prudently checked the disparaging re- 
ply that first occurred to him, and said, “I know 
so little about it tha^ would rather ask you.” 

“I think it mignt become formidable if it 
found able leaders who knew how to use it. 
Pardon me— how' came you to know of this caf^ ? 
Were you recommended to it ?” 

“No; I happened to be in this neighborhood 
on business, and walked in, as I might into any 
other co/’^.” 

“You don’t interest yourself in the great social 
questions which are agitated below the surface of 
this best of all possible worlds ?” 

“I can’t say that I trouble my head much 
about them.” 

“A game at dominoes before M. Georges ar- 
rives ?” 

“Willingly. Is M. Georges one of those agi- 
tators below the surface ?” 

“ No, indeed. It is for you to play.” 

Here M. Georges arrived, and no further con- 
versation on political or social questions ensued. 

Graham had already called more than once at 
M. Lebeau’s office, and asked him to put into 
good French various letters on matters of busi- 
ness, the subjects of which had been furnished by 
M. Renard. The office was rather imposing and ^ 
stately, considering the modest nature of M. Le- 
beau’s ostensible profession. It occupied the en- 
tire ground-floor of a corner house, with a front- ; 
door at one angle and a back-door at the other. ' 
The anteroom to his cabinet, and in which Gra- : 
ham had generally to wait some minutes before ; 
he was introduced, was generally well filled, and i 
not only by persons who, by their dress and out- ji 
ward appearance, might be fairly supposed suffi- I. 
ciently illiterate to require his aid as polite letter- i 
writers — not only by servant-maids and grisettes^ I 


THE PARISIANS. 


83 


by sailors, zouaves, and jounieymen workmen — 
but not unfrequently by clients evidently belong- 
ing to a higher, or at least a richer, class of soci- 
ety — men with clothes made by a fashionable 
tailor — men, again, who, less fashionably attired, 
looked like opulent tradesmen and fathers of well- 
to-do families — the first generally young, the last 
generally middle-aged. All these denizens of a 
higher world were introduced by a saturnine clerk 
into M. Lebeau’s reception-room very quickly, 
and in precedence of the ouvriers and grisettes. 

“What can this mean ?” thought Graham. 
“Is it really that this humble business avowed 
is the cloak to some political conspiracy con- 
cealed — the International Association ?” And, 
so pondering, the clerk one day singled him from 
the crov/d and admitted him into M. Lebeau’s 
cabinet. Graham thought the time had now ar- 
lived when he might safely approach the sub- 
ject that brought him to the Faubourg Mont- 
martre. 

“You are very good,” said Graham, speaking 
in the English of a young earl in our elegant 
novels — “you are very good to let me in while 
you have so many swells and nobs waiting for 
you in the other room. But I say, old fellow, 
you have not the cheek to tell me that they want 
you to correct their cocker or spoon for them by 
proxy ?” 

“ Pardon me,” answered M. Lebeau in French, 
“ if I prefer my own language in replying to you. 
I speak the English I learned many years ago, 
and your language in the beau monde, to which 
you evidently belong, is strange to me. You are 
quite right, however, in your surmise that I have 
other clients than those who, like yourself, think 
I could correct their verbs or their spelling. I 
have seen a great deal of the world — I know 
something of it, and something of the law ; so 
that many persons come to me for advice and for 
legal information on terms more moderate than 
those of an avoue. But my antechamber is full ; 
I am pressed for time ; excuse me if I ask you 
to say at once in what I can be agreeable to you 
to-day.” 

“Ah!” said Graham, assuming a very earnest 
look, “you do know the world, that is clear; 
and you do know the law of France — eh ?” 

“Yes, a little.” 

“What I wanted to say at present may have 
something to do with French law, and I meant 
to ask you either to recommend to me a sharp 
lawyer, or to tell me how I can best get at your 
famous police here.” 

“Police?” 

“I think I may require the service of one of 
those officers whom we in England call detect- 
ives ; but if you are busy now, I can call to- 
morrow.” 

“ I spare you two mintites. Say at once, dear 
monsieur, what you want with law or police.” 

“ I am instructed to find out the address of 
a certain Louise Duval, daughter of a drawing- 
master named Adolphe Duval, living in the Rue 
in the year 1848.” 

Graham, while he thus said, naturally looked 
Lebeau in the face — notpryingly, not significant- 
ly, but as a man generally does look in the face 
the other man wdiom he accosts seriously. The 
change in the face he regarded was slight, but it 
was unmistakable. It was the sudden meeting 
of the eyebrowSj accompanied with the sudden 


jerk of the shoulder and bend of the neck, which 
betoken a man taken by surprise, and who pauses 
to reflect before he replies. His pause was but 
momentary. 

“ For what object is this address required ?” 

“That I don’t know; but evidently for some 
advantage to Madame or Mademoiselle Duval, 
if still alive, because my employer authorizes me 
to spend no less than ,£100 in ascertaining where 
she is, it alive, or where she was buried, if dead ; 
and if other means fail, I am instructed to adverl 
tise to the effect — ‘ That if Louise Duval, or, in 
case of her death, any children of hers living in 
the year 1849, will communicate with some per- 
son whom I may appoint at Paris — such intelli- 
gence, authenticated, may prove to the advantage 
of the party advertised for. ’ I am, however, told 
not to resort to this means without consulting 
either with a legal adviser or the police.” 

“Hem! — have you inquired at the house 
where this lady was, you say, living in 1848?” 

“Of course I have done that; but very clum- 
sily, I dare say — through a friend — and leained 
nothing. But I must not keep you now. I 
think I shall apply at once to the police. What 
should I say when I get to the bureau ?" 

“Stop, monsieur, stop. I do not advise you 
to apply to the police. It would be waste of time 
and money. Allow me to think over the matter. 
I shall see you this evening at the Caf^ Jean. 
Jacques at eight o’clock. Till then do nothing.” 

“All right : I obey you. The whole thing is 
out of my way of business — awfully. Bon jour,'* 


CHAPTER IX. 

Punctually at eight o’clock Graham Vane 
had taken his seat at a corner table at the remote 
end of the Ca f^ Jean Jacques, called for his cup 
of coffee and his evening journal, and awaited 
the arrival of M. Lebeau. His patience was not 
tasked long. In a few minutes the Frenchman 
entered, paused at the comptoir, as was his habit, 
to address a polite salutation to the well-dressed 
lady who there presided, nodded as usual to Ar- 
mand Monnier, then glanced round, recognized 
Graham with a smile, and approached his table 
with the quiet grace of movement by which he 
was distinguished. Seating himself opposite to 
Graham, and speaking in a voice too low to be 
heard by others, and in French, he then said, 

“ In thinking over your communication this 
morning, it strikes me as probable, perhaps as 
certain, that this Louise Duval, or her children, 
if she have any, must be entitled to some mon- 
eys bequeathed to her by a relation or friend in 
England. What sav you to that assumption, M. 
Lamb ?” 

“You are a sharp fellow,” answered Graham. 
“Just what I say to myself. Why else should 
I be instructed to go to such expense in finding 
her out? Most likely, if one can’t trace her, or 
her children born before the date named, any 
such moneys will go to some one else ; and that 
some one else, whoever he be, has commissioned 
my employer to find out. But I don’t imagine 
i any sum due to her or her heirs can be much, or 
j that the matter is very important ; for, if so, the 
I thing would 'not be carelessly left in the hands 
1 of one of the small fry like myself, and clapped 


84 


THE PARISIANS. 


in along with a lot of other business as an off- 
hand job.” 

“Will you tell me who employed you?” 

“ No, 1 don’t feel authorized to do that at pres- 
ent ; and I don’t see the necessity of it. It seems 
to me, on consideration, a matter for the police 
to ferret out ; only, as I asked before, how should 
I get at the police ?” 

“ That is not difficult. It is just possible that 
I might help you better than any lawyer or any 
detective.” 

“Why, did you ever know this Louise Duval ?” 

“Excuse me, M. Lamb: you refuse me your 
full confidence ; allow me to imitate your re- 
serve.” 

“Oho!” said Graham; “shut up as close as 
you like; it is nothing to me. Only observe, 
there is this difference between us, that I am em- 
ployed by another. He does not authorize me 
to name him ; and if I did commit that indiscre- 
tion, I might lose my bread-and-cheese. Where- 
as you have nobody’s secret to guard but your 
own in saying whether or not you ever knew a 
Madame or Mademoiselle Duval. And if you 
have some reason for not getting me the in- 
formation I am instructed to obtain, that is also 
a reason for not troubling you further. And aft- 
er all, old boy” (with a familiar slap on Lebeau’s 
stately shoulder) — “after all, it is I who would 
employ you ; you don’t employ me. And if you 
find out the lady, it is you who would get the 
£100, not 1.” 

M. Lebeau mechanically brushed, with a light 
movement of the hand, the shoulder which the 
Englishman had so pleasantly touched, drew 
himself and chair some inches back, and said, 
slowly, 

“M. Lamb, let us talk as gentleman to gen- 
tleman. Put aside the question of money alto- 
gether, I must first know why your employer 
wants to hunt out this poor Louise Duval. It 
may be to her injury, and I would do her none 
if you offered thousands where you offer pounds. 
I forestall the condition of mutual confidence ; I 
own that I have known her — it is many years ago ; 
and, M. Lamb, though a Frenchman very often 
injures a woman from love, he is in a worse 
]>light for bread-and-cheese than I am if he in- 
jures her for money.” 

“Is he thinking of the duchess’s jewels?” 
thought Graham. 

“Bravo, mon vieiix^" he said, aloud; “but as 
I don’t know what my employer’s motive in his 
commission is, perhaps you can enlighten me. 
How could his inquiry injure Louise Duval ?” 

“I can not say; but you English have the 
power to divorce your wives. Louise Duval may 
liave married an Englishman, separated from 
him, and he wants to know where he can find, 
in order to criminate and divorce her, or it may 
be to insist on her return to him.” 

“ Bosh ! that is not likely.” 

“Perhaps, then, some English friend she may 
have known has left her a bequest, which would 
of course lapse to some one else if she be not liv- 
ing.” 

“By gad!” cried Graham, “I think you hit 
the right nail on the head : c’es? cela. But what 
then ?” 

“ Well, if I thought any substantial benefit to 
Louise Duval might result from the success of 


your inquiry, I would really see if it were in my 
power to help you. But I must have time to 
consider.” 

“ How long?” 

“I can’t exactly say; perhaps three or four 
days. ” 

“ Bon ! I will wait. Here comes M. Georges. 
I leave you to dominoes and him. Good-night.” 

Late that night M. Lebeau was seated alone 
in a chamber connected with the cabinet in 
which he received visitors. A ledger was open 
before him, which he scanned with careful eyes, 
no longer screened by spectacles. The survey 
seemed to satisfy him. He murmured, “It suL 
fices — the time has come;” closed the book, re- 
turned it to his bureau, which he locked up, and 
then wi ote in cipher the letter here reduced into 
English : 

“ Dear and noble Friend, — Events march ; 
the empire is every where undermined. Our 
treasury has thriven in my hands; the sums 
subscribed and received by me through you have 
become more than quadrupled by advantageous 
speculations, in which M. Georges has been a 
most trustworthy agent. A portion of them I 
have continued to employ in the mode suggested 
— viz., in bringing together men discreetly chosen 
as being in their various ways representatives 
and ringleaders of the motley varieties that, 
when united at the right moment, form a Paris- 
ian mob. But from that right moment we are 
as yet distant. Before we can call passion into 
action, we must prepare opinion for change. I 
propose now to devote no inconsiderable portio)i 
of our fund toward the inauguration of a journal 
which shall gradually give voice to our designs. 
Tnist to me to insure its success, and obtain the 
aid of Avriters Avho aaIU have no notion of the 
uses to Avhich they ultimately contribute. Noav 
that the time has come to establish for ourselves 
an organ in the press, addressing higher orders 
of intelligence than those which are needed to 
destroy, and incapable of reconstructing, the 
time has also arriA^ed for the reappearance in his 
proper name and rank of the man in Avhom you 
take so gracious an interest. In vain you have 
pressed him to do so before; till now he had not 
amassed together, by the sIoav process of petty 
gains and constant savings, with such additions 
as prudent speculations on his OAvn account 
might contribute, the modest means necessary to 
his resumed position. And as he always con- 
tended against your generous offers, no consider- 
ation should ever tempt him either to appropriate 
to his personal use a single sou intrusted to him 
for a public purpose, or to accept from friendship 
the pecuniary aid which would abase him into 
the hireling of a cause. No ! Victor de Mauleon 
despises too much the tools that he employs to 
allow any man hereafter to say, ‘Thou also 
wert a tool, and hast been paid for thy uses.’ 

“But to restore the victim of calumny to his 
rightful place in this gfftidy Avorld, stripped of 
youth and reduced in fortune, is a task that may 
well seem impossible. To-morroAv he takes the 
first step toward the achievement of the impossi- 
ble. Experience is no bad substitute for youth, 
and ambition is made stronger by the goad of 
poverty. 

“Thou shalt hear of his netvs soon.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


85 


BOOK 

CHAPTER I. 

Thk next day at noon M. Louvier was clos- 
eted in his study with M. Gandrin. 

“ Yes,” cried Louvier, “ I have behaved very 
handsomely to the beau Marquis. No one can 
say to the contrary.” 

“True,” answered Gandrin. “Besides the 
easy terms for the transfer of the mortgages, 
that free bonus of 1000 louis is a generous and 
noble act of munificence.” 

“Is it not! and my youngster has already 
begun to do with it as I meant and expected. 
He has taken a fine apartment ; he has bought 
a coup^ and horses ; he has placed himself in the 
Iiands of the Chevalier de Einisterre ; he is en- 
tered at the Jockey Club. Parbleu, the 1000 
louis will be soon gone.” 

“ And then ?” 

“And then! — why, he will have tasted the 
sweets of Parisian life. He will think with dis- 
gust of the vieux inanoir. He can borrow no 
more. I must remain sole mortgagee, and I 
shall behave as handsomely in buying his es- 
tates as I have behaved in increasing his in- 
come.” 

Here a clerk entered and said “that a mon- 
.sieur wished to see M. Louvier for a few min- 
utes, in private, on urgent business.” 

“Tell him to send in his card.” 

“ He has declined to do so, but states that 
he has already the honor of your acquaintance.” 

‘ ‘ A writer in the press, perhaps ; or is he an 
artist ?” 

“I have not seen him before, monsieur, but 
he has the air ires coinme il faut." 

“Well, you may admit him. I will not de- 
tain you longer, my dear Gandrin. My hom- 
ages to madame. Bonjour." 

Louvier bowed out M. Gandrin, and then 
rubbed his hands complacently. He was in high 
spirits. “Aha, my dear Marquis, thou art in 
my trap now. Would it were thy father in- 
stead,” he muttered, chucklingly, and then took 
his stand on his hearth, with his back to the fire- 
less giate. There entered a gentleman, exceed- 
ingly well di'essed — dressed according to the fash- 
ion, but still as became one of ripe middle age, not 
desiring to pass for younger than he was. 

He was tall, with a kind of lofty ease in his 
air and his movements ; not slight of frame, but 
spare enough to disguise the strength and endur- 
ance which belong to sinews and thews of steel, 
freed from all superfluous flesh, broad across the 
shoulders, thin in the flanks. His dark hair had 
in youth been luxuriant in thickness and curl ; 
it was now clipped short, and had become bare 
at the temples, but it still retained the lustre of its 
color and the crispness of its ringlets. He wore 
neither beard nor mustache, and the darkness 
of his hair was contrasted by a clear fairness of 
complexion, healthful, though somewhat pale, 
and eyes of that rare gray tint which has in it 
no shade of blue — peculiar eyes, which give a 
very distinct character to the face. The man 
must have been singularly handsome in youth ; 
he was handsome still, though probably in his 
forty-seventh or forty-eighth year, doubtless a 


FIFTH. 

very different kind of comeliness. The form of 
the features and the contour of the face were 
those that suit the rounded beauty of the Greek 
outline, and such beauty would naturally have 
been the attribute of the countenance in earlier 
days. But the cheeks were now thin, and with 
lines of care or sorrow between nostril and lip, 
so that the shape of the face seemed lengthened, 
and the features had become more salient. 

Louvier gazed at his visitor with a vague idea 
that he had seen him before, and could not re- 
member where or when ; but, at all events, he 
recognized at the first glance a man of rank and 
of the great world. 

“Pray be seated, monsieur!” he said, resum- 
ing his own easy-chair. 

The visitor obeyed the invitation with a very 
graceful bend of his head, drew his chair near to 
the financier’s, stretched his limbs with the ease 
of a man making himself at home, and fixing 
his calm bright eyes quietly on Louvier, said, 
with a bland smile, 

“My dear old friend, do you not remember 
me? You are less altered than I am.” 

Louvier stared hard and long; his lip fell, his 
cheek paled, and at last he faltered out, “ del! 
is it possible ! Victor — the Vicomte de Mau- 
leon?” 

“ At your service, my dear Louvier.” 

There was a pause ; the financier was evident- 
ly confused and embarrassed, and not less evi- 
dently the visit of the “ dear old friend” was un- 
welcome. 

“Vicomte,” he said at last, “this is indeed 
a surprise ; I thought you had long since quitted 
Paris for good.” 

^ L'homme propose,' etc. I have returned, 
and mean to enjoy the rest of my days in the 
metropolis of the Graces and the Pleasures. 
What though we are not so young as we were, 
Louvier — we have more vigor in us than the new 
generation ; and though it may no longer befit 
us to renew the gay carousals of old, life has 
still excitements as vivid for the social tempera- 
ment and ambitious mind. Yes, the roi des 
viveurs returns to Paris for a more solid throne 
than he filled before.” 

“Are you serious ?” 

“As serious as the French gayety will permit 
one to be.” 

“Alas, M. le Vicomte ! Can you flatter your- 
self that you will regain the society you have 
quitted, and the name you have — ” 

Louvier stopped short ; something in the Vi- 
comte’s eye daunted him. 

“The name I have laid aside for convenience 
of travel. Princes travel incognito, and so may 
a simple gentilhovnne. ‘ Regain my place in so- 
ciety,’ say you? Yes; it is not that which 
troubles me.” 

“What does?” 

“The consideration whether on a very modest 
income I can be sufficiently esteemed for myself 
to render that society more pleasant than ever. 
Ah, mon cher ! why recoil? why so frightened? 
Do you think I am going to ask you for money ? 
Have I ever done so since we parted ? and did I 
ever do so before without repaying you ? Bah ! 


86 


THP: PARISIANS. 


you roturiers are worse than the Bourbons. You 
never learn nor unlearn. ^ Fors non mutat 
genus.' " 

The magnificent millionnaire, accustomed to 
the homage of grandees from the Faubourg and 
lions from the Chaussee d’Antin, rose to his feet 
in superb wrath, less at the taunting words than 
at the haughtiness of mien with which they were 
uttered. 

“Monsieur, I can not permit you to address 
me in that tone. Do you mean to insult me ?" 

‘ ‘ Certainly not. Tranquillize your nerves, re- 
seat yourself, and listen. Reseat yourself, I say . " 

Louvier dropped into his chair. 

“No,” resumed the Vicomte, politely, “I do 
not come here to insult you, neither do I come 
to ask money ; I assume that I am in my rights 
when I ask M. Louvier what has become of 
Louise Duval ?” 

“ Louise Duval ! I know nothing about her.” 

“Possibly not now; but you did know her 
w’ell enough, when we two parted, to be a candi- 
date for her hand. You did know her enough 
to solicit my good offices in promotion of your 
suit; and you did, at my advice, quit Paris to 
seek her at Aix-la-Chapelle.” 

“ What ! have you, M. de Mauleon, not heard 
news of her since that day ?” 

“ I decline to accept your question as an an- 
swer to mine. You went to Aix-la-Chapelle ; 
you saw Louise Duval; at my urgent request 
she condescended to accept your hand.” 

“ No, M. de Mauleon, she did not accept my 
hand. I did not even see her. The day before 
1 arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle she had left it — not 
alone — left it with her lover.” 

“ Her lover ! You do not mean the miserable 
Englishman who — ” 

“ No Englishman,” interrupted Louvier, fierce- 
ly. “ Enough that the step she took placed an 
eternal barrier between her and myself. I have 
never even sought to hear of her since that day. 
Vicomte, that woman was the one love of my 
life. I loved her, as you must have known, to 
folly — to madness. And how was my love re- 
quited? Ah! you open a very deep wound, M. 
le Vicomte.” 

“Pardon me, Louvier; I did not give you 
credit for feelings so keen and so genuine, nor 
did I think myself thus easily affected by mat- 
ters belonging to a past life so remote from the 
present. For whom did Louise forsake you ?” 

“ It matters not — he is dead.” 

“ 1 regret to hear that ; 1 might have avenged 
you.” 

“I need no one to avenge my wrong. Let 
this pass.” 

“Not yet. Louise, you say, fled with a se- 
ducer ? So proud as she was, 1 can scarcely be- 
lieve it. ” 

“ Oh, it was not with a roturier she fled ; her 
pride would not have allowed that. ” 

“ He must have deceived her somehow. Did 
she continue to live with him ?” 

“That question, at least, I can answer; for 
though I lost all trace of her life, his life was 
pretty well known to me till its end ; and a very 
few months after she fled he was enchained to 
another. Let us talk of her no more.” 

“ Ay, ay,” muttered De Mauleon, “some dis- 
graces are not to be redeemed, and therefore not 
to be discussed. To me, though a relation, 


Louise Duval was but little known, and after 
what you tell me, I can not dispute your right to 
say, ‘ talk of her no more.’ You loved her, and 
she wronged you. My poor Louvier, pardon 
me if I made an old wound bleed afresh.” 

These words were said with a certain pathetic 
tenderness ; they softened Louvier toward the 
speaker. 

After a short pause the Vicomte swept his 
hand over his brow, as if to dismiss from his 
mind a painful and obtrusive thought ; then, 
with a changed expression of countenance — an 
expression frank and winning — with voice and 
with manner in which no vestige remained of 
the irony or the haughtiness with which he had 
resented the frigidity of his reception, he drew 
his chair still nearer to Louvier’s, and resumed : 
“Our situations, Paul Louvier, are much changed 
since we two became friends. I then could say, 

‘ Open, sesame,’ to whatever recesses, forbidden to 
vulgar footsteps, the adventurer whom I took by 
the hand might wish to explore. In those days 
my heart was warm ; I liked you, Louvier — hon- 
estly liked you. I think our personal acquaint- 
ance commenced in some gay gathering of young 
viveurs, whose behavior to you offended my sense 
of good-breeding ?” 

Louvier colored, and muttered inaudibly. 

De Mauleon continued : “I felt it due to you 
to rebuke their incivilities, the more so as you 
e\dnced on that occasion your own superiority in 
sense and temper, permit me to add, with no lack 
of becoming spirit. ” 

Louvier bowed his head, evidently gratified. 

“From that day we became familiar. If any 
obligation to me were incurred, you would not 
have been slow to return it. On more than 
one occasion when I was rapidly wasting money 
— and money was plentiful with you — you gen- 
erously offered me your purse. On more than 
one occasion I accepted the offer ; and you would 
never have asked repayment if I had not insisted 
on repaying. I was no less grateful for your aid. ” 

Louvier made a movement as if to extend his 
hand, but he checked the impulse. 

“There was another attraction which drew 
me toward you. I recognized in your charac- 
ter a certain power in sympathy with that power 
which I imagined lay dormant in myself, and not 
to be found among the freluquets and lions who 
were my more habitual associates. Do you not 
remember some hours of serious talk we have had 
together when we lounged in the Tuileries, or 
sipped our coffee in the garden of the Palais 
Royal^ — hours when we forgot that those were 
the haunts of idlers, and thought of the stormy 
actions affecting the history of the world of which 
they had been the scene — hours when I confided 
to you, as I confided to no other man, the ambi- 
tious hopes for the future which my follies in the 
present, alas ! were hourly tending to frustrate ?” 

“ Ay, I remember the star-lit night ; it was not 
in the gardens of the Tuileries nor in the Palais 
Royal — it was on the Pont de la Concorde, on 
which we had paused, noting the starlight on the 
waters, that you said, pointing toward the walls 
of the Corps Legislatif^ ‘ Paul, when I once get 
into the Chamber, how long will it take me to 
become First Minister of France ?’ ” 

“Did I say so? — possibly; but I was too 
young then for admission to the Chamber, and 
I fancied I had so many years yet to spare in 


THE PARISIANS. 


87 


idle loiterings at the Fountain of Youth. Pass 
over these circumstances. Yon became in love 
with Louise. I told you her troubled history ; it 
did not diminish your love ; and then I frankly 
favored your suit. You set out for Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle a day or two afterward — then fell the thun- 
der-bolt which shattered my existence — and we 
have never met again till this hour. You did 
not receive me kindly, Paul Louvier.” 

“But,” said Louvier, falteringly — “but since 
you refer to that thunder-bolt, you can not but 
be aware that — that — ” 

“1 was subjected to a calumny which I expect 
those who ha^ known me as well as you did to 
assist me now to refute.” 

“ If it be really a calumny.” 

“ Heavens, man ! could you ever doubt that?" 
cried De Mauleon, with heat; “ever doubt that 
I would rather have blown out my brains than 
allowed them even to conceive the idea of a crime 
so base?” 

“Pardon me,” answered Louvier, meekly, 
“but I did not return to Paris for months 
after you had disappeared. My mind was un- 
settled by the news that awaited me at Aix ; I 
sought to distract it by travel — visited Holland 
and England ; and when I did return to Paris, 
all that I heard of your story was the darker side 
of it. I willingly listen to your own account. 
You never took, or at least never accepted, the 

Duchesse de ’s jewels ; and your friend M. 

de N never sold them to one jeweler and 

obtained their substitutes in paste from another ?” 

The Vicomte made a perceptible etfort to re- 
press an impulse of rage ; then reseating himself 
in his chair, and with that slight shrug of the 
shoulder by which a Frenchman implies to him- 
self that rage would be out of place, replied, 

calmly, “M. de N did as you say, but, of 

course, not employed by me, nor with my knowl- 
edge. Listen ; the truth is this — the time has 
come to tell it. Before you left Paris for Aix I 
found myself on the brink of ruin. I had glided 
toward it with my characteristic recklessness — 
with that scorn of money for itself — that sanguine 
confidence in the favor of fortune which are vices 
common to every roi des viveurs. Poor mock 
Alexanders that we spendthrifts are in youth ! 
we divide all we have among others, and when 
asked by some prudent friend, ‘ What have you 
left for your own share?’ answer, ‘Hope.’ I 
knew, of course, that my patrimony was rapid- 
ly vanishing ; but then my horses were match- 
less. I had enough to last me for years on their 
chance of winning — of course th6y would win. 
But you may recollect when we parted that I 
was troubled — creditors’ bills before me, usurers’ 
bills too — and you, my dear Louvier, pressed on 
me your purse — were angry when I refused it. 
How could I accept ? All my chance of repay- 
ment was in the speed of a horse. I believed in 
that chance for myself ; but for a trustful friend, 
no. Ask your own heart, now — nay, I will not 
say heart — ask your own common-sense, whether 
a man who then put aside your purse — spend- 
thrift, vaurien though he might be— was likely 
to steal or accept a woman’s jewels — Pa, mon 
pauvre Louvier^ again I say, Fors non inutat 
genus.' ” 

Despite the repetition of the displeasing patri- 
cian motto, such reminiscences of his visitor s 
motley character — irregular, turbulent, the re- 


verse of severe, but, in its own loose way, grand- 
ly generous and grandly brave — struck both on 
the common-sense and the heart of the listener ; 
and the Frenchman recognized the Frenchman. 
Louvier doubted Mauleon ’s word no more, bowed 
his head, and said, “ Victor de Mauleon, I have 
wronged you — go on.” 

“ On the day after you left for Aix came that 
horse-race on which my all depended : it was 
lost. The loss absorbed the whole of my remain- 
ing fortune : it absorbed about 20,000 francs in 

excess, a debt of honor to De N , whom you 

called my friend : friend he was not ; imitator, 
follower, flatterer, yes. Still I deemed him 
enough my friend to say to him, ‘Give me a 
little time to pay the money; I must sell my 
stud, or write to my only living relation from 
whom I have expectations. ’ You remember that 
relation — Jacques de Mauleon, old and unmar- 
ried. By De N ’s advice I did write to my 

kinsman. No answer came ; but what did come 
were fresh bills from creditors. I then calmly 
calculated my assets. The sale of my stud and 
effects might suflice to pay every sou that I owed, 

including my debt to De N ; but that was not 

quite certain — at all events, when the debts were 
paid I should be beggared. Well, you know, 
Louvier, what we Frenchmen are: how Nature 
has denied to us the quality of patience ; how in- 
voluntarily suicide presents itself to us when hope 
is lost — and suicide seemed to me here due to 
honor — viz., to the certain discharge of my lia- 
bilities — for the stud and effects of Victor de 
Mauleon, roi des viveurs, would command much 
higher prices if he died like Cato than if he ran 
away from his fate like Pompey. Doubtless De 

N guessed my intention from my words or 

my manner ; but on the very day in which I had 
made all preparations for quitting the world from 
which sunshine had vanished I received in a 
blank envelope bank-notes amounting to 70,000 
francs, and the postmark on the “envelope was 
that of the town of Fontainebleau, near to which 
lived my rich kinsman Jacques. I took it for 
granted that the sum came from him. Dis- 
pleased as he might have been with my wild 
career, still I was his natural heir. The sum 
sufficed to pay my debt to De N , to all cred- 

itors, and leave a surplus. My sanguine spirits 
returned. I would sell my stud ; I would re- 
trench, reform, go to my kinsman as the pen- 
itent son. The fatted calf would be killed, and 
I should wear purple yet. You understand that, 
Louvier ?” 

“Yes, yes; so like you. Go on.” 

“ Now, then, came the thunder-bolt. Ah ! in 
those sunny days you used to envy me for being 

so spoiled by women. The Duchesse de had 

conceived for me one of those romantic fancies 
which women without children, and with ample 
leisure for the waste of affection, do sometimes 
conceive for very ordinaiy men younger than 
themselves, but in whom they imagine they dis- 
cover sinners to reform or heroes to exalt. 1 
had been honored by some notes from the Du- 
chesse, in which this sort of romance was owned. 
I had not replied to them encouragingly. In 
truth, my heart was then devoted to another — 
the English girl whom I had wooed as my wife 
— who, despite her parents’ retractation of their 
consent to our union when they learned how 
dilapidated were my fortunes, pledged herself 


88 


THE PARISIANS. 


to remain faithful to me, and wait for better 
days.” Again De Mauleon paused in suppressed 
emotion, and then went on, hurriedly : “ No, the 
Duchesse did not inspire me with guilty passion, 
but she did inspire me with an affectionate re- 
spect. I felt that she was by nature meant to 
be a great and noble creature, and was, never- 
theless, at that moment wholly misled from her 
right place among women by an illusion of mere 
imagination about a man who happened then to 
l)e very much talked about, and perhaps resem- 
bled some Lothario in the novels which she was 
always reading. We lodged, as you may re- 
member, in the same house.” 

“Yes, I remember. I remember how you 
once took me to a great ball given by the Du- 
chesse ; how handsome I thought her, though no 
longer young; and you say right — how 1 did 
envy you that night!” 

“From that night, however, the Due, not un- 
naturally, became jealous. He reproved the 
Duchesse for her too amiable manner toward a 
mauvais sujet like myself, and forbade her in 
future to receive my visits. It was then that 
these notes became frequent and clandestine, 
brought to me by her maid, who took back my 
somewhat chilling replies. 

“But to proceed. In the flush of my high 
spirits, and in the insolence of magnificent ease 

with which I paid De N the trifle I ow ed him, 

something he said made my heart stand still. I 
told him that the money received had come from 
Jacques de Mauleon, and that I was going down 
to his house that day to thank him. He replied, 
‘Don’t go; it did not come from him.’ ‘It 
must; see the postmark of the envelope — Fon- 
tainebleau.’ ‘I posted it at Fontainebleau.’ 
‘You sent me the money — you!’ ‘Nay, that 
is beyond my means. Where it came from,’ 
said this miserable, ‘much more may yet come;’ 
and then he narrated, with that cynicism so in 
vogue at Paris, how he had told the Duchesse 
(who knew him as my intimate associate) of my 
stress of circumstance, of his fear that I medi- 
tated something desperate; how she gave him 
the jew’els to sell and to substitute ; how, in order 
to baffle my suspicion and frustrate my scruples, 
he had gone to Fontainebleau, and there posted 
the envelope containing the bank-notes, out of 
which he secured for himself the payment he 

deemed otherwise imperiled. De N , having 

made this confession, hurried down the stairs 
swiftly enough to save himself a descent by the 
window. Do you believe me still ?” 

“Yes; you were always so hot-blooded, and 

De N so considerate of self, I believe you 

implicitly.” 

“ Of course I did what any man would do — I 
wrote a hasty letter to the Duchesse, stating all 
my gratitude for an act of pure friendship so 
noble, urging also the reasons that rendered it 
impossible for a man of honor to profit by such 
an act. Unhappily, what had been sent was 
paid away ere I knew the facts, but 1 could not 
bear the thought of life till my debt to her was 
acquitted ; in short, J.ouvier, conceive for your- 
self the sort of letter which I — which any hon- 
est man — would write under circumstances so 
cruel.” 

“ H’m !” grunted Louvier. 

“ Something, however, in my letter, conjoined 
wirh what De N had told her as to my state of 


mind, alarmed this poor woman, who had deigned 
to take in me an interest so little deserved. Her 
reply, very agitated and incoherent, was brought 
to me by her maid, who had taken my letter, 
and by whom, as I before said, our correspond- 
ence had been of late carried on. In her reply 
she implored me to decide, to reflect on nothing 
till I had seen her; stated how the rest of her 
day was pre-engaged ; and since to visit her 
openly had been made impossible by the Due’s 
interdict, inclosed the key to the private entrance 
to her rooms, by which I could gain an interview 
with her at ten o’clock that night, an hour at 
which the Due had informed he|^ he should be 
out till late at his club. Now, however great 
the indiscretion which the Duchesse here com- 
mitted, it is due to her memory to say that I am 
convinced that her dominant idea was that I 
meditated self-destruction ; that no time was to 
be lost to save me from it ; and for the rest she 
trusted to the influence which a woman’s tears 
and adjurations and reasonings have over even 
the strongest and hardest men. It is only one 
of those coxcombs in whom the world of fashion 
abounds who could have admitted a thought that 
would have done wrong to the impulsive, gener- 
ous, imprudent eagerness of a woman to be in 
time to save from death by his own hand a fel- 
low-being for whom she had conceived an inter- 
est. I so construed her note. At the hour she 
named I admitted myself into the rooms by the 
key she sent. You know the rest: I w'as dis- 
covered by the Due and by the agents of police 
in the cabinet in w'hich the Duchesse’s jewels 
were kept. The key that admitted me into the 
cabinet was found in my possession.” 

De Mauleon’s voice here faltered, and he cov- 
ered his face with a convulsive hand. Almost in 
the same breath he recovered from visible sign of 
emotion, and went on, with a half laugh : 

“ Ah ! you envied me, did you, for being 
spoiled by the women ? Enviable position, in- 
deed, was mine that night. The Due obeyed 
the first impulse of his wrath. He imagined 
that I had dishonored him : he w’ould dishonor 
me in return. Easier to his pride, too, a charge 
against the robber of jewels than against a fa- 
vored lover of his wife. But when I, obeying 
the first necessary obligation of honor, invented 
on the spur of the moment the story by which 
the Duchesse’s reputation w'as cleared from sus- 
picion, accused myself of a frantic passion and 
the trickery of a fabricated key, the Due’s true 
nature of gentilhomme came back. He retracted 
the charge w'hich he could scarcely even at the 
first blush have felt to be well founded ; and as 
the sole charge left was simply that which men 
comme il faut do not refer to criminal courts and 
police investigations, I was left to make my bow 
unmolested, and retreat to my own rooms, await- 
ing there such communications as the Due might 
deem it right to convey to me on the morrow. 

“But on the morrow' the Due, w'ith his wife 
and personal suit, quitted Paris en route for 
Spain ; the bulk of his retinue, including the of- 
fending abigail, was discharged ; and, whether 
through these servants or through the police, 
the story before evening w'as in the mouth of 
every gossip in club or cafd — exaggerated, dis- 
torted, to my ignominy and shame. My detec- 
tion in the cabinet, the sale of the jewels, the sub- 
stitution of paste by De N , who was known 


THE PARISIANS. 


89 


to be my servile imitator, and reputed to be my 
abject tool, all my losses on the turf, my debts 
— all these scattered fibres of flax were twisted 
together in a rope that would have hanged a dog 
with a much better name than mine. If some 
disbelieved that I could be a thief, few of those 
who should have known me best held me guilt- 
less of a baseness almost equal to that of theft — 
the exaction of profit from the love of a foolish 
woman.” 

“ But you could have told your own tale, shown 
the letters you had received from the Ducliesse, 
and cleared away every stain on your honor.” 

“ How'? — shown her letters, ruined her char- 
acter, even stated that she had caused her jewels 
to be sold for the uses of a young roue ! Ah, no, 
Louvier. I would rather have gone to tlie gal- 
leys !” 

“ H’m !” grunted Louvier again. 

“The Due generously gave me better means 
of righting myself. Three days after he quitted 
Paris I received a letter from him, very politely 
written, expressing his great regret that any 
words implying the suspicion too monstrous and 
absurd to need refutation should have escaped 
him in the surprise of the moment ; but stating 
that since the otfense I had owned was one that 
he could not overlook, he was under the necessi- 
ty of asking the only reparation I could make. 
That if it ‘ deranged’ me to quit Paris, he would 
return to it for the purpose I'equired ; but that 
if I would give him the additional satisfaction 
of suiting his convenience, he should prefer to 
await my arrival at Bayonne, where he was, de- 
tained by the indisposition of tlie Duchesse.” 

“You have still that letter?” asked Louvier, 
quickly. 

“ Yes ; with other more important documents 
constituting what I may call my pieces justijica- 
tives. 

“I need not say that I replied, stating the 
time at which I should arrive at Bayonne, and 
the hotel at which I should await the Due’s 
command. Accordingly I set out that same 
day, gained the hotel named, dispatched to the 
Due the announcement of my arrival, and was 
considering how I should obtain a second in 
some officer quartered in the town — for my sore- 
ness and resentment at the marked coldness of 
my former acquaintances at Paris had forbidden 
me to seek a second among any of that faithless 
number — when the Due himself entered my 
room. Judge of my amaze at seeing him in 
person ; judge how much greater the amaze be- 
came when he advanced, with a grave but cor- 
dial smile, offering me his hand ! 

“ ‘M. de Mauleon,’ said he, ‘since I wrote to 
you, facts have become known to me Avhich 
would induce me rather to ask your friendship 
than call on you to defend your life. Madame 
la Duchesse has been seriously ill since we left 
Paris, and I refrained from all explanations 
likely to add to the hysterical excitement under 
which she was suffering. It is only this day 
that her mind became collected, and she herself 
then gave me her entire confidence. Monsieur, 
she insisted on my reading the letters that you 
addressed to her. Those letters, monsieur, suf- 
fice to prove your innocence of any design against 
my peace. The Duchesse has so candidly avow- 
ed her own indiscretion, has so clearly established 
the distinction between indiscretion and guilt, 

G 


that I have granted her my pardon with a light- 
ened heart, and a firm belief that we shall be 
happier together than we have been yet. ’ 

“The Due continued his journey the next 
day, but he subsequently honored me with two 
or three letters, written as friend to friend, and 
in which you will find repeated the substance 
of what I have stated him to say by word of 
mouth.” 

“ But why not then have returned to Paris ? 
Such letters, at least, you might have shown, and 
in braving your calumniators you would have 
soon lived them down.” 

“ You forget that I was a ruined man. When, 
by the sale of my horses, etc. , my debts, includ- 
ing what was owed to the Duchesse, and which 
I remitted to the Due, were discharged, the bal- 
ance left to me would not have maintained me a 
week at Paris. Besides, I felt so sore, so indig- 
nant. Paris and the Parisians had become to 
me so hateful. And to crown all, that girl, that 
English girl whom I had so loved, on whose 
fidelity I had so counted — well, I received a let- 
ter from her, gently but coldly bidding me fare- 
well forever. I do not think she believed me 
guilty of theft, but doubtless the oflPense I had 
confessed, in order to save the honor of the 
Duchesse, could but seem to her all-sufficient! 
Broken in spirit, bleeding at heart to the very 
core, still self-destruction was no longer to be 
thought of. I would not die till I could once 
more lift up my head as Victor de Mauleon.” 

“ What then became of you, my poor Victor ?” 

“Ah! that is a tale too long for recital. I 
have played so many parts that I am puzzled to 
recognize my own identity with the Victor de 
Mauleon whose name I abandoned. I have 
been a soldier in Algeria, and won my cross on 
the field of battle — that cross and my colonel’s 
letter are among my pieces justijicatives. I have 
been a gold-digger in California, a speculator in 
New York, of late in callings obscure and hum- 
ble. But in all my adventures, under whatever 
name, I have earned testimonials of probity, could 
manifestations of so vulgar a virtue be held of 
account by the enlightened people of Paris. I 
come now to a close. The Vicomte de Mauleon 
is about to reappear in Paris, and the first to 
whom he announces that sublime avatar is Paul 
Louvier. Wlien settled in some modest apart- 
ment, I shall place in your hands my pieces jus- 
tijicatives. I shall ask you to summon my sur- 
viving relations or connections, among which are 
the Counts de Vandemar, Beauvilliers, De Passy, 
and the Marquis de Rochebriant, with any friends 
of your own who sway the opinions of the Great 
World. You will place my justification before 
them, expressing your own opinion that it suf- 
fices ; in a word, you will give me the sanction 
of your countenance. For the rest, I trust to 
myself to propitiate the kindly and to silence the 
calumnious. I have spoken ; what say you ?” 

“ You overrate my power in society. Why 
not appeal yourself to your high-born relations ?” 

“No, Louvier; I have too well considered 
the case to alter my decision. It is through 
you, and you alone, that I shall approach my 
relations. My vindicator must be a man of 
whom the vulgar can not say, ‘ Oh, he is a re- 
lation — fellow-noble: those aristocrats white- 
wash each other.’ It must be an authority with 
the public at large — a bourgeois, a millionnaire, a 


90 


THE PARISIANS. 


roi de la Bourse. I choose you, and that ends 
the discussion.” 

Louvier c.ould not help laughing good-humor- 
edly at the samj-froid of the Vicomte. He was 
once more under the domination of a man who 
had for a time dominated all with whom he lived. 

De Mauleon continued: “Your task will be 
easy enough. Society changes rapidly at Paris. 
Few persons now exist who have more than a 
vague recollection of the circumstances, which 
can be so easily explained to my complete vin- 
dication when the vindication comes from a man 
of your solid respectability and social influence. 
Besides, I have political objects in view. You 
are a Liberal ; the Vandemars and Rochebiiants 
are Legitimists. I prefer a godfather on the 
Liberal side. Pardieu, mm ami, why such co- 
quettish hesitation? Said and done. Your 
hand on it.” 

“ There is my hand, then. I will do all I 
can to help you.” 

“ I know you will, old friend ; and you do both 
kindly and wisely. ” Here De Mauleon cordially 
pressed the hand he held, and departed. 

On gaining the street the Vicomte glided 
into a neighboring court-yard, in which he had 
left his fiacre, and bade the coachman drive to- 
ward the Boulevard Sebastopol. On the way 
he took from a small bag that he had left in the 
carriage the flaxen wig and pale whiskers which 
distinguished M. Lebeau, and mantled his ele- 
gant habiliments in an immense cloak, which he 
had also left in the fiacre. Arrived at the Boule- 
vard Sebastopol, he drew up the collar of the 
cloak so as to conceal much of his face, stopped 
the driver, paid him quickly, and, bag in hand, 
hurried on to another stand of fiacres at a little 
distance, entered one, drove to the Faubourg 
Montmartre, dismissed the vehicle at the mouth 
of a street not far from M. Lebeau’s office, and 
gained on foot the private side-door of the house, 
let himself in with his latch-key, entered the 
private room on the inner side of his office, lock- 
ed the door, and proceeded leisurely to exchange 
the brilliant appearance which the Vicomte de 
Mauleon had borne on his visit to the million- 
naire for the sober raiment and bourgeois air of 
M. Lebeau, the letter-writer. 

Then after locking up his former costume in 
a drawer of his secretaire, he sat himself down 
and wrote the following lines : 

“Dear M. Georges, — I advise you strongly, 
from information that has just reached me, to 
lose no time in pressing M. Savarin to repay the 
sum I recommended you to lend him, and for 
which you hold his bill due this day. The scan- 
dal of legal measures against a writer so distin- 
guished should be avoided if possible. He will 
avoid it and get the money somehow. But he 
must be urgently pressed. If you neglect this 
warning, my responsibility is past. — Agreez vies 
sentimens les plus sinceres. J. L.” 


CHAPTER II. 

The Marquis de Rochebriant is no longer 
domiciled in an attic in the gloomy faubourg. 
See him now in a charming appartement de gar- 
den au premier in the Rue du Helder, close by 


the promenades and haunts of the mode. It had 
been furnished and inhabited by a brilliant 
young provincial from Bordeaux, who, coming 
into an inheritance of 100,000 francs, had rush- 
ed up to Paris to enjoy himself, and make his 
million at the Bourse. He had enjoyed him- 
self thoroughly — he had been a darling of the 
demi monde. He had been a successful and an 
inconstant gallant. Zelie had listened to his 
vows of eternal love, and his offers of unlimited 
cachemires. Desiree, succeeding Zelie, had as- 
signed to him her whole heart, or all tiiat was 
left of it, in gratitude for the ardor of his pas- 
sion, and the diamonds and coupe which accom- 
panied and attested the ardor. The superb 
Hortense, stipplanting Desiree, received, his vis- 
its in the charming apartment he furnished for 
her, and entertained him and his friends at the 
most delicate little suppers, for the moderate 
sum of 4000 francs a month. Yes, he had en- 
joyed himself thoroughly, but he had not made 
a million at the Bourse. Before the year was 
out the 100,000 francs were gone. Compelled 
to return to his province, and by his hard-heart- 
ed relations ordained, on penalty of starvation, 
to marry the daughter of an avoue, for the sake 
of her dot and a share in the hated drudgery of 
the avou^'s business, his apartment was to be 
had for a tenth part of the original cost of its 
furniture. A certain Chevalier de Finisterre, to 
whom Louvier had introduced the Marquis as a 
useful fellow, who knew Paris, and would save 
him from being cheated, had secured this bijou 
of an apartment for Alain, and concluded the 
bargain for the bagatelle of £500. The Cheva- 
lier took the same advantageous oceasion to pur- 
chase the English well-bred hack, and the neat 
coup^ and horses which the Bordelais was also 
necessitated to dispose of. These purchases 
made, the Marquis had some 5000 francs (£200) 
left out of Louvier’s premium of £1000. The 
Marquis, however, did not seem alarmed or de- 
jected by the sudden diminution of capital so 
expeditiously effected. The easy life thus com- 
menced seemed to him too natural to be fraught 
with danger ; and easy though it was, it was a 
very simple and modest sort of life cqmpared 
with that of many other men of his age to whom 
Enguerrand had introduced him, though most 
of them had an income less than his, and few, 
indeed, of them were his equals in dignity of 
birth. Could a Marquis de Rochebriant, if he 
lived at Paris at all, give less than 3000 francs 
a year for his apartment, or mount a more hum- 
ble establishment than that confined to a valet 
and a tiger, two horses for his coup€ and one for 
the saddle? “ Impossible,” said the Chevalier 
de Finisterre, decidedly ; and the Marquis bow- 
ed to so high an authority. He thought within 
himself, “If I find in a few months that I am 
exceeding my means, I can but dispose of my 
rooms and my horses, and return to Rochebri- 
ant a richer man by far than I left it.” 

To say truth, the brilliant seductions of Paris 
had already produced their effect, not only on 
the habits, but on the character and cast of 
thought, which the young noble had brought 
with him from the feudal and melancholy Bre- 
tagne. 

Warmed by the kindness with which, once in- 
troduced by his popular kinsmen, he was every 
where received, the reserve or shyness which is 


91 


THE PARISIANS. 


the compromise between the haughtiness of 
self-esteem and the painful doubt of appreciation 
by others rapidly melted away. He caught in- 
sensibly the polished tone, at once so light and 
so cordial, of his new-made friends. With all 
the efforts ot the democrats to establish equality 
and tVaternit 3 \ it is among the aristocrats that 
equality and fraternity are most to be found. 
All gentilshommes in the best society are equals, 
and whether they embrace or fight each other, 
they embrace or fight as brothers of the same 
family. But with the tone of manners Alain de 
Rochebriant imbibed still more insensibly the 
lore of that philosophy which young idlers in 
pursuit of pleasure teach to each other. Prob- 
ably in all civilized and luxurious capitals that 
philosophy is very much the same among the 
same class of idlers at the same age ; probably 
it flourishes in Pekin not less than at Paris. If 
Paris has the credit, or discredit, of it more 
than any other capital, it is because in Paris 
more than in any other capital it charms the 
eye by grace and amuses the ear by wit.- A 
philosophy which takes the things of this life 
very easily — which has a smile and a shrug of 
the shoulders for any pretender to the Heroic — 
wdiich subdivides the wealth of passion into the 
pocket-money of caprices — is always in or out 
of love, ankle-deep, never venturing a plunge — 
which, light of heart as of tongue, turns “the 
solemn plausibilities” of earth into subjects for 
epigrams and bons mots — it jests at loyalty to 
kings, and turns up its nose at enthusiasm for 
commonwealths — it abjures all grave studies — it 
shuns all profound emotions. We have crowds 
of such philosophers in London, but there they 
are less noticed, because the agreeable attributes 
of the sect are there dimmed and obfuscated. 
It is not a philosophy that flowers richly in the 
reek of fogs and in the teeth of east winds ; it 
wants for full development the light atmosphere 
of Paris. Now this philosophy began rapidly to 
exercise its charms upon Alain de Rochebriant. 
Even in the society of professed Legitimists he 
felt that faith had deserted the Legitimist creed, 
or taken refuge only as a companion of religion 
in the hearts of high-born women and a small 
minority of priests. His chivalrous loyalty still 
struggled to keep its ground, but its roots were 
very much loosened. He saAv — for his natural 
intellect was keen — that the cause of the Bour- 
bon was hopeless, at least for the present, be- 
cause it had ceased, at least for the present, to 
be a cause. Plis political creed thus shaken, 
with it was shaken also that adherence to the 
past which had stifled his ambition of a future. 
That ambition began to breathe and to stir, 
though he owned it not to others — though, as 
yet, he scarce distinguished its whispers, much 
less directed its movements toward any definite 
object. Meanwhile, all that he knew of his am- 
bition was the new-born desire for social success. 

We see him, then, under the quick operation 
of this change in sentiments and habits reclined 
on the fauteuil before his fireside, and listening 
to his college friend, of whom we have so long 
lost sight, Frederic Lemercier. Frederic had 
breakfasted with Alain— a breakfast such as 
might have contented the author of t\\Q Almanack 
des Gourmands^ and provided from the Cafe 
Anglais. Frederic has just thrown aside his 
regalia. 


Pardieu! my dear Alain. If Louvier has 
no sinister object in the generosity of his deal- 
ings with you, he will have raised himself pro- 
digiously in my estimation. I shall forsake in 
his favor my allegiance to Duplessis, though that 
clever fellow has just made a wondrous coup in 
the Egyptians, and I gain 40,000 francs- by hav- 
ing followed his advice. But if Duplessis has a 
head as long as Louvier’s, he; certainly has not 
an equal greatness of soul. Still, my dear friend, 
will you pardon me if I speak frankly, and in 
the way of a warning homily?” 

“ Speak ; you can not oblige me more.” 

“Well, then, I know that you can no more 
live at Paris in the way you are doing, or mean 
to do, without some fresh addition to your in- 
come than a lion could live in the Jardin des 
Plantes upon an allowance of two mice a week.” 

“I don’t see that. Deducting what I pay to 
my aunt — and I can not get her to take rnore 
than 6000 francs a year — I have 700 napoleons 
left, net and clear. My rooms and stables are 
equipped, and I have 2500 francs in hand. On 
700 napoleons a year I calculate that I can verv 
easily live as I do, and if I fail — well, I must 
return to Rochebriant. Seven hundred napo- 
leons a year will be a magnificent rental there.” 

Frederic shook his head. 

“ You do not know how one expense leads to 
another. Above all, you do not calculate the 
chief part of one’s expenditure — the unforeseen. 
You will play at the Jockey Club, and lose half 
your income in a night.” 

“ I shall never touch a card.” 

“So you say now, innocent as a lamb of the 
force of example. At all events, beau seigneur, 
I presume you are not going to resuscitate the 
part of the Ermite de la Ckaussee d’Antin; and 
the fair Parisiennes are demons of extrava- 
gance.” 

“Demons whom I shall not court.” 

‘ ‘ Did I say you would ? They will court you. 
Before another month has flown you will be in- 
undated with billets-doux." 

“It is not a shower that will devastate my 
humble harvest. But, mon cher, we are falling 
upon very gloomy topics. Laissez-moi tranquille 
in my illusions, if illusions they be. Ah, you 
can not co-nceive what a new life opens to the 
man who, like myself, has passed the dawn of 
his youth in privation and fear when he suddenly 
acquires competence and hope. If it last only a 
year, it will be something to say ‘ Vixi.’” 

“Alain,” said Frederic, very earnestly, “be- 
lieve me I should not have assumed the un- 
gracious and inappropriate task of Mentor if it 
were only a year’s experience at stake, or if you 
were in the position of men like myself — free 
from the encumbrance of a great name and heav- 
ily mortgaged lands. Should you fail to pay 
regularly the interest due to Louvier, he has the 
power to put up at public auction, and there to 
buy in for himself, your chateau and domain.” 

“I am aware that in strict law he would have 
such power, though I doubt if he would use it. 
Louvier is certainly a much better and more 
generous fellow than I could have expected, and 
if I believe De Finisterre, he has taken a sincere 
liking to me on account of affection to my poor 
father. But why should not the interest be paid 
regularly? The revenues from Rochebriant are 
not likely to decrease, and the charge on them 


92 


THE PARISIANS. 


is lightened by the contract with Louvier. And 
I will confide to you a hope I entertain of a very 
large addition to my rental. ” 

“How?” 

“A chief part of my rental is derived from 
forests, and De Finisterre has heard of a capital- 
ist who is disposed to make a contract for their 
sale at the fall this year, and may probably ex- 
tend it to future years, at a price far exceeding 
that which I have hitherto obtained.” 

“Pray be cautious. De Finisterre is not a 
man I should implicitly trust in such matters.” 

“ Why ? do you know any thing against him ? 
He is in the best society — perfect gentilhomme — 
and as his name may tell you, a fellow-Breton. 
You yourself allow, and so does Enguerrand, 
that the purchases he made for me — in this 
apartment, my horses, etc. — are singularly ad- 
vantageous.” 

“Quite true; the Chevalier is reputed sharp 
and clever, is said to be very amusing, and a 
first-rate piquet-^lsiyex. I don’t know him per- 
sonally. I am not in his set. I have no valid 
reason to disparage his character, nor do I con- 
jecture any motive he could have to injure or 
mislead you. Still, I say, be cautious how far 
you trust to his advice or recommendation.” 

“Again I ask why?” 

“He is unlucky to his friends. He attaches 
himself much to men younger than himself; and 
somehow or other I have observed that most of 
them have come to grief. Besides, a person in 
whose sagacity I have great confidence warned 
me against making the Chevalier’s acquaintance, 
and said to me, in his blunt way, ‘ De Finisterre 
came to Paris with nothing; he has succeeded 
to nothing; he belongs to no ostensible profes- 
sion by which any thing can be made. But ev- 
idently now he has picked up a good deal ; and 
in proportion as any young associate of his be- 
comes poorer, De Finisterre seems mysteriously 
to become richer. Shun that sort of acquaint- 
ance. ’ ” 

“ Who is your sagacious adviser?” 

“Duplessis.” 

“Ah, I thought so. That bird of prey fan- 
cies every other bird looking out for pigeons. I 
fancy that Duplessis is, like all those money-get- 
ters, a seeker after fashion, and De Finisterre 
has not returned his bow.” 

“My dear Alain, I am to blame; nothing is 
so irritating as a dispute about the worth of the 
men we like. I began it, now let it be dropped ; 
only make me one promise, that if you should 
be in arrear, or if need presses, you will come 
at once to me. It was very well to be absurdly 
proud in an attic, but that pride will be out of 
place in your appartement au premier ” 

“You are the best fellow in the world, Fred- 
eric, and I make you the promise you ask,” said 
Alain, cheerfully, but yet with a secret emotion 
• of tenderness and gratitude. “And now, mon 
chery what day will you dine with me to meet 
Raoul and Enguerrand and some others whom 
you would like to know ?” 

“Thanks, and hearty ones, but we move now 
in different spheres, and I shall' not trespass on 
yours. Je suis trop bourgeois to incur the ridi- 
cule of le bourgeois gentilhomme. ” 

“Frederic, how dare you speak thus? My 
dear fellow, my friends shall honor you as I do.” 

“ But that will be on your account, not mine. 


No ; honestly, that kind of society neither tempts 
nor suits me. 1 am a sort of king in my own 
walk ; and I prefer my Bohemian royalty to vas- 
salage in higher regions. Say no moie of it. 
It will flatter my vanity enough if you will now 
and then descend to my coteries, and allow me 
to parade a Rochebriant as my familiar crony, 
slap him on the shoulder, and call him Alain.” 

“Fie! you who stopped me and the English 
aristocrat in the Champs Elysees to humble us 
with your boast of having fascinated une grande 
dame — I think you said a diichesse." 

“Oh,” said Lemercier, conceitedly, and pass- 
ing his hand through his scented locks, “ women 
are different ; love levels all ranks. I don’t blame 
Ruy Bias for accepting the love of a queen, but 
I do blame him for passing himself oflf' as a no- 
ble — a plagiarism, by-the-bye, from an English 
play. I do not love the English enough to copy 
them. ApropoSy what has become of ce beau 
Grarm-Varn ? I have not seen him of late.” 

“ Neither have I.” 

“Nor the belle Italiennef" 

“Nor her,” said Alain, slightly blushing. 

At this moment Enguerrand lounged into the 
room. Alain sto])ped Lemercier to introduce 
him to his kinsman. “Enguerrand, I present 
to you M. Lemercier, my earliest and one of my 
dearest friends.” 

The young noble held out his hand Avith the 
bright and joyous grace which accompanied all 
his movements, and expressed in cordial words 
his delight to make M. Lemercier’s acquaintance. 
Bold and assured as Frederic was in his own cir- 
cles, he was more discomposed than set at ease 
by the gracious accost of a liony whom he felt at 
once to be of a breed superior to his own. He 
muttered some confused phrases, in which ravi 
and Jiatte were alone audible, and evanished. 

“I know M. Lemercier by sight very well,” 
said Enguerrand, seating himself. “ One sees 
him very often in the Bois ; and I have met him 
in the Coulisses and the Bal Mabille. I think, 
too, that he plays at the Bourse, and is li^ with 
M. Duplessis, who bids fair to rival Louvier one 
of these days. Is Duplessis also one of your 
dearest friends ?” 

“No, indeed. I once met him, and Avas not 
prepossessed in his favor.” 

“Nevertheless he is a man much to be ad- 
mired and respected.” 

“Why so?” 

“ Because he understands so Avell the art of 
making Avhat Ave all covet — money. I Avill in- 
troduce you to him.” 

“ I have been already introduced.” 

“Then I aauU reintroduce you. He is much 
courted in a society Avhich I have recently been 
permitted by my father to frequent — the society 
of tbe Imperial Court.” 

“You frequent that society, and the Count 
permits it?” 

“ Yes ; better the Imperialists than the Repub- 
licans ; and my father begins to own that truth, 
though he is too old or too indolent to act on it.” 

“ And Raoul ?” 

“Oh, Raoul, the melancholy and philosophic- 
al Raoul, has no ambition of any kind so long as 
— thanks someAvhat to me — his purse is always 
replenished for the Avants of his stately exist- 
ence, among the foremost of which wants are 
the means to supply the Avants of others. That 


THE PARISIANS. 


93 


is the true reason why he consents to our glove 
shop. Raoul belongs, with some other young 
men of the faubourg, to a society enrolled under 
the name of Saint Fran9ois de Sales, for the re- 
lief of the poor. He visits their houses, and is 
at home by their sick-beds as at their stinted 
boards. Nor does he confine his visitations to 
the limits of our faubourg ; he extends his trav- 
els to Montmartre and Belleville. As to our up- 
I)er world, he does not concern himself much 
with its changes. He says that ‘we have de- 
stroyed too much ever to rebuild solidly ; and 
that whatever we do build could be upset any 
day by a Paris mob,’ which he declares to be the 
only institution we have left. A wonderful fel- 
low is Raoul ; full of mind, though he does little 
with it ; full of heart, which he devotes to suf- 
fering humanity, and to a poetic, knightly rev- 
erence (not to be confounded with earthly love, 
and not to be degraded into that sickly senti- 
ment called Platonic affection) for the Comtesse 
di Rimini, who is six years older than himself, 
and who is very faithfully attached to her hus- 
band, Raoul’s intimate friend, whose honor he 
would guard as his own. It is an episode in the 
drama of Parisian life, and one not so uncom- 
mpn as the malignant may suppose. Di Rimini 
knows and approves of his veneration ; my moth- 
er, the best of women, sanctions it, and deems 
truly that it preserves Raoul safe from all the 
temptations to which ignobler youth is exposed. 
I mention this lest you should imagine there was 
any thing in Raoul’s worship of his star less pure 
than it is. For the rest, Raoul, to the grief and 
amazement of that disciple of Voltaire, my re- 
spected father, is one of the very few men I know 
in our circles who is sincerely religious — an or- 
thodox Catholic — and the only man I know who 
practices the religion he professes ; charitable, 
chaste, benevolent ; and no bigot, no intolerant 
ascetic. His only weakness is his entire submis- 
sion to the worldly common-sense of his good- 
for-nothing, covetous, ambitious brother Enguer- 
rand. I can not say how I love him for that. 
If he had not such a weakness his excellence 
Avould gall me, and I believe I should hate him.” 

Alain bowed his head at this eulogium. Such 
had been the character that, a few months ago, 
he would have sought as example and model. 
He seemed to gaze upon a flattered portrait of 
himself as he had been. 

“But,” said Enguerrand, “I have not come 
here to indulge in the overflow of brotherly af- 
fection. I come to take you to your relation 
the Duchess of Tarascon. I have pledged my- 
self to her to bring you, and she is at home on 
purpose to receive you. ” 

“In that case I can not be such a churl as to 
refuse. And, indeed, I no longer feel quite the 
same prejudices against her and the Imperialists 
as I brought from Bretagne. Shall I order my 
carriage ?” 

“ No ; mine is at the door. Yours can meet 
you where 3'ou will later. Allans.'' 


CHAPTER III. 

Thk Duchesse de Tarascon occupied a vast 
apartment in the Rue Royale, close to the Tui- 
leries. She held a high post among the ladies 


who graced the brilliant court of the Empress. 
She had survived her second husband, the Due, 
who left no issue, and the title died with him. 
Alain and Enguerrand were ushered up the grand 
staircase, lined with tiers of costly exotics as if 
for a fete; but in that and in all kinds of female 
luxury the Duchesse lived in a state of fete per- 
p^tuelle. The doors on the landing-place were 
screened by heavy portieres of Genoa velvet, 
richly embroidered in gold, with the ducal crown 
and cipher. The two salons through which the 
visitors passed to the private cabinet or boudoir 
were decorated w’ith Gobelin tapestries, fresh, 
with a mixture of roseate hues, and depicting 
incidents in the career of the first Emperor; 
while the effigies of the late Due's father — the 
gallant founder of a short-lived race — figured 
modestly in the background. On a table of 
Russian malachite within the recess of the cen- 
tral window lay, preserved in glass cases, the 
baton and the sword, the epaulets and the dec- 
orations, of the brave Marshal. On the consoles 
and the mantel-pieces stood clocks and vases of 
Sevres that could scarcely be eclipsed by those 
in the imperial palaces. Entering the cabinet, 
they found the Duchesse seated at her writing- 
table, with a small Skye terrier, hideous in the 
beauty of the purest breed, nestled at her feet. 
This room was an exquisite combination of cost- 
liness and comfort — Luxury at home. The 
hangings were of geranium-colored silk, with 
double curtains of white satin ; near to the writ- 
ing-table a conservatory, with a white marble 
fountain at play in the centre, and a trellised avi- 
ary at the back. The walls were covered with 
small pictures — chiefly portraits and miniatures 
of the members of the imperial family, of the late 
Due, of his father the Marshal, and Madame la 
Marechale, of the present Duchesse herself, and 
of some of the principal ladies of the court. 

The Duchesse was still in the prime of life. 
She had passed her fortieth year, but was so well 
“conserved” that you might have guessed her 
to be ten years younger. She was tall; not 
large — but with rounded figure inclined to em- 
bonpoint ; with dark hair and eyes, but fair com- 
plexion, injured in effect rather than improved 
by pearl-powder, and that' atrocious barbarism 
of a dark stain on the eyelids which has of late 
years been a baneful fashion ; dressed — I am a 
nian, and can not describe her dress — all I know 
is, that she had the acknowledged fame of the 
best-dressed subject of France. As she rose 
from her seat there was in her look and air the 
unmistakable evidence of grande dame ; a family 
likeness in feature to Alain himself, a stronger 
likeness to the picture of her first cousin— his 
mother — which w’as preserved at Rochebriant. 
Her descent was indeed from ancient and noble 
houses. But to the distinction of race she added 
that of fashion, crowning both with a tranquil 
consciousness of lofty position and unblemished 
reputation. 

“Unnatural cousin,” she said to Alain, offer- 
ing her hand to him, with a gracious smile ; 
“ all this age in Paris, and I see you for the first 
time. But there is joy on earth as in heaven 
over sinners who truly repent. You repent tru- 
ly — nest ce pas ?" 

It is impossible to describe the caressing charm 
which the Duchesse threw into her words, voice, 
and look. Alain was fascinated and subdued. 


94 


THE PARISIANS. 


“Ah, Madame la Duchesse,” said he, bowing 
over the fair hand he lightly held, “it was not 
sin, unless modesty be a sin, which made a rus- 
tic hesitate long before he dared to oiler his 
homage to the queen of the graces.” 

“Not badly said for a rustic,” cried Enguer- 
rand ; “ eh, madame ?” 

“ My cousin, you are pardoned,” said the Du- 
chesse. “Compliment is the perfume gentil- 
hommerie. And if you brought enough of that 
])erfume from the flowers of Rochebriant to dis- 
tribute among the ladies at court, you will be 
terribly the mode there. Seducer!” — here she 
gave the Marquis a playful tap on the cheek, 
not in a coquettish but in a mother-like famil- 
iarity, and looking at him attentively, said : 
“Why, you are even handsomer than your fa- 
ther. I shall be proud to present to their Im- 
perial Majesties so becoming a cousin. But 
seat yourselves here, messieurs, close to my arm- 
chair, causons." 

The Duchesse then took up the ball of the 
conversation. She talked without any apparent 
artifice, but with admirable tact; put just the 
({uestions about Rochebriant most calculated to 
])lease Alain, shunning all that might have pained 
him ; asking him for descriptions of the sur- 
rounding scenery — the Breton legends ; hoping 
that the old castle would never be spoiled by 
modernizing restorations ; inquiring tenderly 
after his aunt, whom she had in her childhood 
once seen, and still remembered with her sweet, 
grave face ; paused little for replies ; then turned 
to Enguerrand with sprightly small-talk on the 
topics of the day, and every now and then bring- 
ing Alain into the pale of the talk, leading on 
insensibly until she got Enguerrand himself to 
introduce the subject of the Emperor, and the 
political troubles which were darkening a reign ! 
heretofore so prosperous and splendid. 

Her countenance then changed ; it became se- 
rious, and even grave, iti its expression. 

“It is true,” she said, “that the times grow 
menacing — menacing not only to the throne, but 
TO order and property and France. One by one 
they are removing all the breakwaters which the 
empire had constructed between the executive 
and the most fickle and impulsive population that 
ever shouted ‘ long live’ one day to the man 
whom they would send to the guillotine the next. 
They are denouncing what they call personal 
government — grant that it has its evils ; but 
what would they substitute? — a constitutional 
monarchy like the English ? That is impossible 
with universal suftrage and without a hereditary 
chamber. The nearest approach to it was the 
monarchy of Louis Philippe — we know how sick 
they became of that. A republic ? mon Dieu ! 
composed of republicans terrified out of their 
wits at each other. The moderate men, mimics 
of the Girondins, with the Reds, and the Social- 
ists, and the Communists, ready to tear them to 
pieces. And then — what then? — the commer- 
cialists, the agi'iculturists, the middle class, 
combining to elect some dictator who will can- 
nonade the mob, and become a mimic Napoleon, 
grafted on a mimic Necker or a mimic Danton. 
Oh, messieurs, I am French to the core ! You 
inheritors of such names must be as French as I 
am ; and yet you men insist on remaining more 
useless to France in the midst of her need than I 
am — I, a woman who can but talk and weep.” 


The Duchesse spoke with a warmth of emotion 
which startled and profoundly affected Alain. 
He remained silent, leaving it to Enguerrand to 
answer. 

“Dear madame,” said the latter, “I do not 
see how either myself or our kinsman can meiit 
your reproach. We are not legislators. 1 doubt 
if there is a single department in France that 
would elect us if we ofl’ered ourselves. It is not 
our fault if the various floods of revolution leave 
men of our birth and opinions stranded wrecks 
of a perished world. The Emperor chooses his 
own advisers, and if they are bad ones, his Maj- 
esty certainly will not ask Alain and me to re- 
place them.” 

“You do not answer — you evade me,” said 
the Duchesse, with a mournful smile. “You 
are too skilled a man of the world, M. Enguer- 
rand, not to know that it is not only legislators 
and ministers that are necessary to the support 
of a throne and the safeguard of a nation. Do 
you not see how great a help it is to both 
throne and nation when that section of public 
opinion which is represented by names illustrious 
in history, identified with records of chivalrous 
deeds and loyal devotion, rallies round the order 
established ? Let that section of public opinion 
stand aloof, soured and discontented, excluded 
from active life, lending no counterbalance to the 
perilous oscillations of democratic passion, and 
tell me if it is not an enemy to itself as well as 
a traitor to the principles it embodies ?” 

“The principles it embodies, madame,” said 
Alain, “are those of fidelity to a race of kings 
unjustly set aside, less for the vices than the 
virtues of ancestors. Louis XV. was the worst 
of the Bourbons — he was the bien aime — he es- 
capes ; Louis XVI. was in moral attributes the 
best of the Bourbons — he dies the death of a 
felon ; Louis XVIII., against whom much may 
be said, restored to the throne by foreign bayonets, 
reigning as a disciple of Voltaire might reign, 
secretly scotfing alike at the royalty and the re- 
ligion which were crowned in his person, dies 
})eacefully in his bed; Charles X., redeeming 
the errors of his youth by a reign untarnished 
by a vice, by a religion earnest and sincere, is 
sent into exile for defending established order 
from the very inroads which you lament. He 
leaves an heir against whom calumny can not in- 
vent a tale, and that heir remains an outlaw sim- 
ply because he descends from Henry IV., and 
has a right to reign. Madame, you appeal to 
us as among the representatives of the chivalrous 
deeds and loyal devotion which characterized 
the old nobility of France. Should we deserve 
that character if we forsook the unfortunate, and 
gained wealth and honor in forsaking ?” 

“Your words endear you to me. I am proud 
to call you cousin,” said the Duchesse. “But 
do you, or does any man in his senses, believe 
that if you upset the empire you could get back 
the Bourbons ? that you would not be in immi- 
nent danger of a government infinitely more op- 
posed to the theories on which rests the creed of 
Legitimists than that of Louis Napoleon ? After 
all, what is there in the loyalty of you Bourbon- 
ites that has in it the solid worth of an argu- 
ment which can appeal to the comprehension of 
mankind, except it be the principle of a hered- 
itary monarchy? Nobody nowadays can main- 
tain the right divine of a sipgle regal family to^ 


THE PARISIANS. 


95 


impose itself upon a nation. That dogma has 
ceased to be a living principle ; it is only a dead 
reminiscence. But the institution of monarchy 
is a principle strong and vital, and appealing to 
the practical interests of vast sections of society. 
Would you sacrifice the principle which concerns 
the welfare of millions, because you can not em- 
body it in the person of an individual utterly in- 
significant in himself? In a word, if you pre- 
fer monarchy to the hazard of republicanism for 
such a country as France, accept the monarchy 
you find, since it is quite clear you can not re- 
build the monarchy you would prefer. Does it 
not embrace all the great objects for which you 
call yourself Legitimist? Under it religion is 
honored, a national Church secured, in reality 
if not in name ; under it you have united the 
votes of millions to the establishment of the 
throne ; under it all the material interests of 
the country, commercial, agilcultural, have ad- 
vanced with an unequaled rapidity of progress : 
under it Paris has become the wonder of the 
world for riches, for splendor, for grace and 
beauty ; under it the old traditional enemies of 
France have been humbled and rendered impo- 
tent. The policy of Richelieu has been achieved 
in the abasement of Austria ; the policy of Na- 
poleon I. has been consummated in the salvation 
of Europe from the semi-barbarous ambition of 
Russia. England no longer casts her trident in 
the opposite scale of the balance of European 
power. Satisfied with the honor of our alliance, 
she has lost every other ally ; and her forces 
neglected, her spirit enervated, her statesmen 
dreaming believers in the safety of their island, 
provided they withdraw from the affairs of Eu- 
rope, may sometimes scold us, but will certainly 
not dare to fight. With France she is but an in- 
ferior satellite ; without France she is — nothing. 
Add to all this a court more brilliant than that 
of Louis XIV., a sovereign not, indeed, without 
faults and errors, but singularly mild in his na- 
ture, warm-hearted to friends, forgiving to foes, 
whom personally no one could familiarly know 
and not be charmed with a bonte of character, 
lovable as that of Henri IV. — and tell me what 
more than all this could you expect from the 
reign of a Bourbon ?” 

‘•With such results,” said Alain, “from the 
monarchy you so eloquently praise, I fail to dis- 
cover what the Emperor’s throne could possibly 
gain by a few powerless converts from an un- 
popular, and yon say, no doubt truly, from a 
hopeless cause.” 

“ I say monarchy gains much by the loyal ad- 
hesion of any man of courage, ability, and hon- 
or. Every new monarchy gains much by conver- 
sions from the ranks by which the older mon- 
archies were strengthened and adorned. But I 
do not here invoke your aid merely to this mon- 
archy, my cousin ; 1 demand your devotion to the 
interests of France; I demand that you should 
not rest an outlaw from her service. Ah, you 
think that France is in no danger — that you may 
desert or oppose the em])ire as you list, and that 
society will remain safe! You are mistaken. 
Ask Enguerrand.” 

“ Madame,” said Enguerrand, “you overrate 
my political knowledge in that appeal ; but, hon- 
estly speaking, I subscribe to your reasonings. 
I agree with you that the empire sorely needs 
the support of men of honor : it has one cause 


of rot which now undermines it — dishonest job- 
bery in its administrative departments, even in 
that of the army, which apparently is so heeded 
and cared for. I agree with you that France is 
in danger, and may need the swords of all her 
better sons, whether against the foreigner or 
against her worst enemies — the mobs of her great 
towns. I myself received a military education, 
and but for my reluctance to separate myself from 
rny father and Raoul, I should be a candidate for 
employments more congenial to me than those 
of the Bourse and my trade in the glove shop. 
But Alain is happily free from all family lies, 
and Alain knows that my advice to him is not 
hostile to your exhortations.” 

“I am glad to think he is under so salutary 
an influence,” said the Duchesse; and seeing 
that Alain remained silent and thoughtful, she 
wisely changed the subject, and shortly afterward 
the two friends took leave. 


CHAPTER IV. 

Three days elapsed before Graham again saw 
M. Lebeau. The letter-writer did not show 
himself at the cafe, and was not to be found at 
his office, the ordinary business of which was 
transacted by his clerk, saying that his master 
was much engaged on important matters that 
took him from home. 

Graham naturally thought that these matters 
concerned the discovery of Louise Duval, and 
was reconciled to suspense. At the cafe, await- 
ing Lebeau, he had slid into some acquaintance 
with the ouvrier, Armand Monuier, whose face 
and talk had before excited his interest. In- 
deed, the acquaintance had been commenced by 
the ouvrier, who seated himself at a table near 
to Graham’s, and, after looking at him earnestly 
for some minutes, said, “You are waiting for 
your antagonist at dominoes, M. Lebeau — a very 
remarkable man.” 

“ So he seems. I know, however, but little of 
him. You, perhaps, have known him longer?” 

“ Several months. Many of your countrymen 
frequent this cafe, but you do not seem to care 
to associate with the blouses.’' 

“ It is not that ; but we islanders are shy, and 
don’t make acquaintance with each other readily. 
By-the-way, since you so courteously accost me, 
I may take the liberty of saying that I overheard 
you defend the other night, against one of ra}' 
countrymen, who seemed to me to talk great 
nonsense, the existence of le Bon JJieu. You 
had much the best of it. I rather gathered from 
your ai’gument that you went somewhat farther, 
and were not too enlightened to admit of Chris- 
tianity.” 

Armand Monnier looked pleased — he liked 
praise ; and he liked to heiir himself talk, and he 
plunged at once into a very complicated sort of 
Christianity — partly Arian, partly St. Simonian, 
with a little of Rousseau, and a great deal of 
Armand Monnier. Into this we need not follow 
him ; but, in sum, it was a sort of Christianity 
the main heads of which consisted in the remov- 
al of your neighbor’s landmarks — in the right of 
the poor to appropriate the property of the rich 
— in the right of love to dispense with marriage, 
and the duty of the state to provide for any chil- 


96 


THE PARISIANS. 


dren that might result from such union, the par- 
ents being incapacitated to do so, as whatever 
they might leave was due to the treasury in com- 
mon. Graham listened to these doctrines with 
melancholy not unmixed with contempt. “ Are 
these opinions of yours,” he asked, “derived 
from reading or your own reflection ?” 

“Well, from both, but from circumstances in 
life that induced me to read and reflect. I am 
one of the many victims of the tyrannical law 
of marriage. When very young I married a 
woman who made me miserable, and then forsook 
me. Morally, she has ceased to be my wife — 
legally, she is. I then met with another woman 
who suits me, who loves me. She lives with 
me ; I can not marry her ; she has to submit to 
humiliations, to be called contemptuously an ou- 
vrier's mistress. Then, though before I was 
only a Republican, I felt there was something 
wrong in society which needed a greater change 
than that of a merely political government ; and 
then, too, when I was all troubled and sore, I 
chanced to read one of Madame de Grantmes- 
nil’s books. A glorious genius that woman’s!” 

“She has genius, certainly,” said Graham, 
with a keen pang at his heart ; Madame de 
Grantmesnil, the dearest friend of Isaura! 
“But,” he added, “though I believe that elo- 
quent author has indirectly assailed certain so- 
cial institutions, including that of marriage, I 
am perfectly persuaded that she never designed 
to effect such complete overthrow of the system 
which all civilized communities have hitherto 
held in reverence as your doctrines would at- 
tempt ; and after all, she but expresses her ideas 
through the medium of fabulous incidents and 
characters. And men of your sense should not 
look for a creed in the fictions of poets and ro- 
mance- Avriters. ” 

“Ah,” said Monnier, “I dare say neither 
Madame de Grantmesnil nor even Rousseau ever 
even guessed the ideas they awoke in their read- 
ers ; but one idea leads on to another. And 
genuine poetry and romance touch the heart so 
much more than dry treatises. In a word, Ma- 
dame de Grantmesnil’s book set me thinking ; 
and then I read other books, and talked with 
clever men, and educated myself. And so I 
became the man I am.” Here, with a self-sat- 
isfied air, Monnier bowed to the Englishman, 
and joined a group at the other end of the room. 

The next evening, just before dusk, Graham 
Vane was seated musingly in his own apartment 
in the Faubourg Montmartre, w'hen there came 
a slight knock at his door. He was so wrapped 
in thought that he did not hear the sound, though 
twice repeated. The door opened gently, and 
M. Lebeau appeared on the threshold. The 
room was lighted only by the gas-lamp from the 
street without. 

Lebeau advanced through the gloom, and qui- 
etly seated himself in the corner of the fire-place 
opposite to Graham before he spoke. “A 
thousand pardons for disturbing your slumbers, 
M. Lamb.” 

Startled then by the voice so near him, Gra- 
ham raised his head, looked round, and beheld 
very indistinctly the person seated so near him. 

“M. Lebeau?” 

“ At your service. I promised to give an an- 
swer to your question : accept my apologies that 
it has been deferred so long. I shall not this 


evening go to our cafe; I took the liberty of 
calling — ” 

“M. Lebeau, you are a brick.” 

“ A what, monsieur ! — a brique ?" 

“I forgot — you are not up to our fashionable 
London idioms. A brick means a jolly fellow, 
and it is very kind in you to call. What is your 
I decision ?” 

“Monsieur, I can give you some information, 
but it is so slight that I offer it gratis, and fore- 
go all thought of undertaking farther inquiries. 
They could only be prosecuted in another coun- 
try, and it would not be worth my while to leave 
Paris on the chance of gaining so trifling a re- 
ward as you propose. Judge for yourself. In 
the year 1849, and in the month of July, Louise 
Duval left Paris for Aix-la-Chapelle. There she 
remained some weeks, and then left it. I can 
learn no farther traces of her movements.” 

“ Aix-la-Chapelle! — what could she do there?” 

“ It is a Spa in great request — crowded during 
the summer season with visitors from all coun- 
tries. She might have gone there for health or 
for pleasure.” 

‘ ‘ Do you think that one could learn more at 
the Spa itself if one went there ?” 

“Possibly. But it is so long — twenty years 
ago.” 

“She might have revisited the place.” 

“Certainly; but I know no more.” 

“Was she there under the same name — 
Duval?” 

“ I am sure of that.” 

“Do you think she left it alone or with others? 
You tell me she was awTulIy belle — she might 
have attracted admirers.” 

“If,” answered Lebeau, reluctantly, “I could 
believe the report of my informant, Louise Duval 
left Aix not alone, but with some gallant — not 
an Englishman. They are said to have parted 
soon, and the man is now dead. But, speaking 
frankly, I do not think Mademoiselle Duval 
would have thus compromised her honor and 
sacrificed her future. I believe she would have 
scorned all proposals that were not those of mar- 
riage. But all I can say for certainty is, that 
nothing is known to me of her fate since she 
quitted Aix-la-Chapelle.” 

“ In 1849 — she had then a child living?” 

“A child? I never heard that she had any 
child ; and I do not believe she could have had 
any child in 1849.” 

Graham mused. Somewhat less than five 
years after 1849 Louise Duval had been seen at 
Aix-la-Chapelle. Possibly she found some at- 
traction at that place, and might yet be discover- 
ed there. “ Monsieur Lebeau,” said Graham, 
“you know this lady by sight; you would re- 
cognize her in spite of the lapse of years. Will 
you go to Aix and find out there what you can ?. 
Of course expenses will be paid, and the reward 
will be given if you succeed.” 

“I can not oblige you. My interest in this 
poor lady is not very strong, though I should be 
willing to serve her, and glad to know she were 
alive. I have now business on hand which in- 
terests me much more, and wLich will take me 
from Paris, but not in the direction of Aix. ” 

“If I wrote to my employer, and got him to 
raise the reward to some higher amount that 
might make it worth your while ?” 

“ I should still answer that my afhiirs will not 


THE PARISIANS. 


97 


permit such a journey. But if there be any 
chance of tracing Louise Duval at Aix — and 
there may be — you would succeed quite as well 
as I should. You must judge for yourself if it 
be worth your trouble to attempt such a task ; 
and if you do attempt it, and do succeed, pray 
let me know. A line to my office will reach me 
for some little time, even if I am absent from 
Paris. Adieu, M. Lamb.” 

Here M. Lebeau rose and departed. 

Graham’relapsed into thought, but a train of 
thought much more active, much more concen- 
tred than before. ‘ ‘ No” — thus ran his medita- 
tions — “ no, it w’ould not be safe to employ that 
man further. The reasons that forbid me to 
offer any very high reward for the discovery of 
this woman operate still more strongly against 
tendering to her own relation a sum that might 
indeed secure his aid, but would unquestionably 
arouse his suspicions, and perhaps drag into light 
all that must be concealed. Oh, this cruel mis- 
sion! I am, indeed, an impostor to myself till 
it be fulfilled. I will go to Aix, and take Renard 
with me. I am impatient till I set out, but I 
can not quit Paris without once more seeing 
Isaura. She consents to relinquish the stage ; 
surely I could wean her, too, from intimate 
friendship with a woman whose genius has so 
fatal an effect upon enthusiastic minds. And 
then — and then?” 

He fell into a delightful reverie ; and con- 
templating Isaura as his future wife, he sur- 
rounded her sweet image with all those attributes 
of dignity and respect with which an Englishman 
is accustomed to invest the destined bearer of 
his name, the gentle sovereign of his household, 
the sacred mother of his children. In this pic- 
ture the more brilliant qualities of Isaura found, 
perhaps, but faint presentation. Her glow of 
sentiment, her play of fancy, her artistic yearn- 
ings for truths remote, for the invisible fairy- 
land of beautiful romance, receded into the back- 
ground of the picture. It was all these, no doubt, 
that had so strengthened and enriched the love 
at first sight whiqh had shaken the equilibrium 
of his positive existence ; and yet he now viewed 
all these as subordinate to the one image of mild 
decorous matronage into which wedlock was to 
transform the child of genius, longing for angel 
wings and unlimited space. 


CHAPTER V. 

On quitting the sorry apartment of the false 
M. Lamb, Lebeau walked on with slow steps 
and bended head, like a man absorbed in thought. 
He threaded a labyrinth of obscure streets, no 
longer in the Faubourg Montmartre, and dived 
at last into one of the few courts which preserve 
the cachet of the moyen age untouched by the 
ruthless spirit of improvement which, during the 
Second Empire, has so altered the face of Paris. 
At the bottom of the court stood a large house, 
much dilapidated, but bearing the trace of for- 
mer grandeur in pilasters and fretwork in the 
style of the Renaissance, and a defaced coat of 
arms, surmounted with a ducal coronet, over the 
doorway. The house had the aspect of deser- | 
tion : many of the windows were broken, others I 
were jealously closed with mouldering shutters. 1 


The door stood ajar; Lebeau pushed it open, 
and the action set in movement a bell within a 
porter s lodge. The house, then, was not unin- 
habited; it retained the dignity of a concierge. 
A man with a large gnzzled beard cut square, 
and holding a journal in his hand, emerged from 
the lodge, and moved his cap with a certain bluff 
and surly reverence on recognizing Lebeau. 

“ What ! so early, citizen ?” 

“Is it too early?” said Lebeau, glancing at 
his watch. “So it is. I was not aware of the 
time ; but I am tired with waiting. Let me into 
the salon. I will wait for the rest; I shall not 
be sorry for a little repose.” 

“ Bon” said the porter, sententiously ; “while 
man reposes men advance.” 

“A profound truth. Citizen Le Roux; though, 
if they advance on a reposing foe, they have 
blundering leaders unless they march through 
unguarded by-paths and with noiseless tread.” 

Following the porter up a dingy broad stair- 
case, Lebeau was admitted into a large room void 
of all other furniture than a table, two benches 
at its sides, and a fauteuil at its head. On the 
mantel-piece there was a huge clock, and some 
iron sconces were fixed on the paneled walls. 

Lebeau flung himself with a wearied air into 
the fauteuil. The porter looked at him with a 
kindly expression. He had a liking to Lebeau, 
whom he had served in his proper profession of 
messenger or commissionnaire before being placed 
by that courteous employer in the easy post he 
now held. Lebeau, indeed, had the art, when 
he pleased, of charming inferiors ; his knowledge 
of mankind allowed him to distinguish pecul- 
iarities in each individual, and flatter the amour 
propre by deference to such eccentricities. Marc 
le Roux, the roughest of “red caps,” had a wife 
of whom he was very proud. He would have 
called the Empress Citoyenne Eugenie, but he 
always spoke of his wife as madame. Lebeau 
won his heart by always asking after madame. 

“Y"ou look tired, citizen,” said the porter; 
“let me bring you a glass of wine.” 

“ Thank you, mon ami, no. Perhaps later, if 
I have time, after we break up, to pay my re- 
spects to madame.” 

The porter smiled, bowed, and retired, mut- 
tering, “ Nom dun petit bonhomme — il ny a rien 
de tel que les belles manieres.” 

Left alone, Lebeau leaned his elbow on tlie 
table, resting his chin on his hand, and gazing 
into the dim space — for it was now, indeed, 
night, and little light came through the grimy 
panes of the one window left unclosed by shut- 
ters. He w’as musing deeply. This man was, 
in much, an enigma to himself. Was he seek- 
ing to unriddle it? A strange compound of 
contradictory elements. In his stormy youth 
there had been lightning-like flashes of good in- 
stincts, of irregular honor, of inconsistent gen- 
erosity — a puissant wild nature — with strong 
passions of love and of hate, without fear, but 
not without shame. In other forms of society 
that love of applause which had made him seek 
and exult in the notoriety which he mistook for 
fame might have settled down into some solid 
and useful ambition. He might have become 
great in the world’s eye, for at the service of his 
desires there were no ordinary talents. Though 
I too true a Parisian to be a severe student, still, 
on the whole, he had acquired much general in- 


98 


THE PARISIANS. 


formation, partly from books, partly from varied 
commerce with mankind. He had the gift, both 
by tongue and by pen, of expressing himself with 
force and warmth — time and necessity had im- 
proved that gift. Coveting, during his brief 
career of fashion, the distinctions which neces- 
sitate lavish expenditure, he had been the most 
reckless of spendthrifts, but the neediness which 
follows waste had never destroyed his original 
sense of personal honor. Certainly Victor de 
Mauleon was not, at the date of his fall, a man 
to whom the thought of accepting, much less of 
stealing, the jewels of a woman who loved him, 
could have occurred as a possible question of 
casuistry between honor and temptation. Nor 
could that sort of question have, throughout the 
sternest trials or the humblest callings to which 
his after-life had been subjected, forced admis- 
sion into his brain. He w’as one of those men, 
perhaps the most terrible though unconscious 
criminals, who are the offsprings produced by in- 
tellectual power and egotistical ambition. If 
you had ottered to Victor de Mauleon the crown 
of the Csesars on condition of his doing one of 
those base things which “ a gentleman” can not 
do — pick a pocket, cheat at cards — Victor de 
Mauleon would have refused the crown. He 
W'ould not have refused on account of any law s 
of morality affecting the foundations of the social 
system, but from the pride of his own personal- 
ity. “ I, Victor de Mauleon ! I pick a pocket ! 
I cheat at cards ! I !” But when something in- 
calculably worse for the interests of society than 
picking a pocket or cheating at cards was con- 
cerned — when, for the sake either of private am- 
bition, or political experiment hitherto untested, 
and therefore very doubtful, the peace and order 
and happiness of millions might be exposed to 
the release of the most savage passions — rushing 
on revolutionary madness or civil massacre — then 
this French dare-devil would have been just as 
unscrupulous as any English philosopher whom 
a metropolitan borough might elect as its repre- 
sentative. The system of the empire was in 
the way of Victor de Mauleon — in the way of 
his private ambition, in the way of his political 
dogmas — and therefore it must be destroyed, no 
matter what nor whom it crushed beneath its 
ruins. He was one of those plotters of revolu- 
tions not uncommon in democracies, ancient and 
modern, who invoke popular agencies with the 
less scruple because they have a supreme con- 
tempt for the populace. A man with mental 
pow'ers equal to De Mauleon’s, and w ho sincere- 
ly loves the people and respects the grandeur of 
aspiration with w'hich, in the great upheaving of 
their masses, they so often contrast the irration- 
al credulities of their ignorance and the blind 
fury of their wrath, is always exceedingly loath 
to pass the terrible gulf that divides reform from 
i-evolution. He knows how rarely it happens 
that genuine liberty is not disarmed in the pas- 
sage, and what sutferings must be undergone by 
those who live by their labor during the dismal 
intervals between the sudden destruction of one 
form of society and the gradual settlement of 
another. Such a man, how'ever, has no type in 
a Victor de Maule'on. The circumstances of his 
life had placed this strong nature at w'ar with so- 
ciety, and corrupted into misanthropy affections 
that had once been ardent. That misanthropy 
made his ambition more intense, because it in- 


creased his scorn for the human instruments it 
employed. 

Victor de Mauleon knew that, however inno- 
cent of the charges that had so long darkened 
his name, and however — thanks to his rank, his 
manners, his savoir vivre, the aid of Louvier’s 
countenance, and the support of his own high- 
born connections — he might restore himself to 
his rightful grade in private life, the higher prizes 
in public life w’ould scarcely be within reach, to 
a man of his antecedents and stinted means, in 
the existent form and conditions of established 
political order. Perforce, the aristocrat must 
make himself democratic if he would become a 
political chief. Could he assist in turning up- 
side down the actual state of things, he trusted 
to his individual force of character to find him- 
self among the uppermost in the general houle- 
versevient. And in the first stage of popular 
revolution the mob has no greater darling than 
the noble who deserts his order, though in the 
second stage it may guillotine him at the denun- 
ciation of his cobbler. A mind so sanguine and 
so audacious as that of Victor de Mauleon never 
thinks of the second step if it sees a way to the 
first. 


CHAPTER VI. 

The room was in complete darkness, save 
w'here a ray from a gas-lamp at the mouth of 
the court came aslant through the window, when 
Citizen Le Roux re-entered, closed the w indow, 
lighted two of the sconces, and drew forth from 
a drawer in the table implements of wn-iting, 
which he placed thereon noiselessly, as if he 
feared to disturb ISl. Lebeau, w hose head, buried 
in his hands, rested on the table. He seemed 
in a profound sleep. At last the porter gently 
touched the arm of the slumberer, and whis- 
pered in his ear, “ It is on the stroke of ten, 
citizen ; they will be here in a minute or so. ” 
Lebeau lifted his head drow’sily. 

“Eh,” said he — “ what?” 

“You have been asleep.” 

“I suppose so, for I have been dreaming. 
Ha! I hear the door-bell. I am wide awake 
now.” 

The porter left him, and in a few minutes 
conducted into the salon two men wrapped in 
cloaks, despite the warmth of the summer night. 
Lebeau shook hands with them silently, and not 
less silently they laid aside their cloaks and seat- 
ed themselves. Both these men appeared to be- 
long to the upper section of the middle class. 
One, strongly built, with a keen expression of 
countenance, was a surgeon considered able in 
his profession, but with limited practice, owing 
to a current suspicion against his honor in con- 
nection with a forged will. The other, tall, 
meagre, w-ith long grizzled hair and a wild, un- 
settled look about the eyes, was a man of sci- 
ence ; had written works well esteemed upon 
mathematics and electricity; also against the 
existence of any other creative power than that 
which he called “nebulosity,” and defined to be 
the combination of heat and moisture. The 
surgeon was about the age of forty, the atheist 
a few years older. In another minute or so a 
knock was heard against the w'all. One of the 
men rose and touched a spring in the panel. 


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ONK OF THK MEN ROSE ANT) TOUOHEI) A SPRING IN THE PANEL, WHICH THEN FLEW BACK, AND SHOWED AN OPENING UPON A 
NARROW STAIR, BY WHICH, ONE AFTER THE OTHER, ENTERED THREE OTHER MEMBERS OP THE SOCIETY,” 



THE PARISIANS. 


99 


which then flew back, and showed an opening 
upon a narrow stair, by which, one after the 
other, entered three other members of the so- 
ciety. Evidently there was more than one mode 
of ingress and exit. 

The three new-comers were not Frenchmen — 
one might see that at a glance ; probably they had 
reasons for greater precaution than those who 
entered by the front-door. One, a tall, power- 
fully built man, with fair hair and beard, dressed 
with a certain pretension to elegance — faded 
threadbare elegance — exhibiting no appearance 
of linen, was a Pole. One, a slight, bald man, 
very dark and sallow, was an Italian, The 
third, who seemed like an ouvrier in his holiday 
clothes, was a Belgian. 

Lebeau greeted them all with an equal court- 
esy, and each with an equal silence took his seat 
at the table. 

Lebeau glanced at the clock. “ Confreres," 
he said, “our number, as fixed for this stance, 
still needs two to be complete, and doubtless 
they will arrive in a few minutes. Till they 
come w^e can but talk upon trifles. Permit me 
to offer you my cigar-case.” And so saying, he 
who professed to be no smoker handed his next 
neighbor, who w'as the Pole, a large cigar-case 
amply furnished ; and the Pole, helping himself 
to two cigars, handed the case to the man next 
him, tw'o only declining the luxury, the Italian 
and the Belgian. But the Pole was the only 
man w^ho took two cigars. 

Steps w'ere now heard on the stairs, the door 
opened, and Citizen Le Roux ushered in, one 
after the other, two men, this time unmistaka- 
bly French — to an experienced eye unmistakably 
Parisians : the one a young beardless man, who 
seemed almost boyish, with a beautiful face and 
a stinted, meagre frame ; the other a stalwart 
man of about eight-and-twenty, dressed partly 
as an ouvrier, not in his Sunday clothes, rather 
affecting the blouse — not that he wore that an- 
tique garment, but that he was- in rough cos- 
tume, unbrushed and stained, with thick shoes 
and coarse stockings, and a workman’s cap. 
But of all who gathered round the table at 
which M. Lebeau presided, he had the most dis- 
tinguished exterior. A virile honest exterior, a 
massive open forehead, intelligent eyes, a hand- 
some clear-cut incisive profile, and solid jaw. 
The expression of the face was stern, but not 
mean — an expression which might have become 
an ancient baron as well as a modern workman 
— in it plenty of haughtiness and of will, and 
still more of self-esteem. 

'"^Confreres," said Lebeau, rising, and every 
eye turned to him, “ our number for the present 
seance is complete. To business. Since we last 
met our cause has advanced with rapid and not 
with noiseless stride. I need not tell you that 
Louis Bonaparte has virtually abnegated Les 
id^es NopoUoniennes — a fatal mistake for him, 
a glorious advance for us. The liberty of the 
press must very shortly be achieved, and with it 
personal government must end. When the au- 
tocrat once is compelled to go by the advice of 
his ministers, look for sudden changes. His 
ministers will be but weather-cocks, turned hith- 
er and thither according as the wind chops at 
Paris; and Paris is the temple of the winds. 
The new revolution is almost at hand.” (Mur- 
murs of applause.) “It would move the laugh- 


ter of the Tuileries and its ministers, of the 
Bourse and of its gamblers, of every dainty salon 
of this silken city of would-be philosophers and 
wits, if they were told that here within this 
mouldering baraque, eight men, so little blessed 
by fortune, so little known to fame as ourselves, 
met to concert the fall of an empire. The gov- 
ernment would not deem us important enough 
to notice our existence.” 

“ I know not that,” interrupted the Pole. 

“ Ah, pardon,” resumed the orator ; “I should 
have confined my remark to the Jive of us who 
are French. I did injustice to the illustrious an- 
tecedents of our foreign allies. I know that you, 
Thaddeus Loubisky — that you, I^eonardo Raselli 
— have been too eminent for hands hostile to ty- 
rants not to be marked with a black cross in the 
books of the police. I know that you, Jan Van- 
derstegen, if hitherto unscarred by those w'ounds 
in defense of freedom which despots and cowards 
would fain miscall the brands of the felon, still 
owe it to your special fraternity to keep your 
movements rigidly concealed. The tyrant would 
suppress the International Society, and forbids 
it the liberty of congress. To you three is grant- 
ed the secret entrance to our council-hall. But 
we Frenchmen are as yet safe in our supposed 
insignificance. Conjreres, permit me to impress 
on you the causes why, insignificant as we seem, 
we are really formidable. In the first place, we 
are few : the great mistake in most secret asso- 
ciations has been to admit many councilors ; and 
disunion enters wherever many tongues can wran- 
gle. In the next place, though so few in coun- 
cil, we are legion when the time comes for ac- 
tion, because we are representative men, each 
of his own section, and each section is capable 
of an indefinite expansion. 

“You, valiant Pole — you, politic Italian — 
enjoy the confidence of thousands now latent 
in un watched homes and harmless callings, but 
who, when you lift a finger, will, like the buried 
di'agon’s teeth, spring up into armed men. You, 
Jan Vanderstegen, the trusted delegate from 
Verviers, that swarming camp of wronged la- 
bor in its revolt from the iniquities of capital — 
you, when the hour arrives, can touch the wire 
that flashes the telegram ‘ Arise’ through all the 
lands in which workmen combine against their 
oppressors. 

“Of us five Frenchmen let me speak more 
modestly. You — sage and scholar — Felix Ru- 
vigny, honored alike for the profundity of your 
science and the probity of your manners, in- 
duced to join us by your abhorrence of priest- 
craft and superstition — you have a wide connec- 
tion among all the enlightened reasoners who 
would emancipate the mind of man from the 
trammels of Church-born fable — and when the 
hour arrives in which it is safe to say, Delenda 
est Roma,' yo\x know where to find the pens that 
are more victorious than swords against a Church 
and a Creed. You” (turning to the surgeon) — 
“you, Gaspard le Noy, whom a vile calumny 
has robbed of the throne in your profession, so 
justly due to your skill — you, nobly scorning the 
rich and great, have devoted yourself to tend 
and heal the humble and the penniless, so that 
you have won the popular title of the ‘ M^decin 
des Pauvres' — when the time comes w-herein sol- 
diers shall fly before the sans-cidottes, and the 
mob shall begin the work which they who move 


100 


THE PARISIANS. 


mobs will complete, the clients of Gaspard le 
Noy will be the avengers of his wrongs. 

“You, Armand Monnier, simple oui^rier, but 
of illustrious parentage, for your grandsire was 
the beloved friend of the virtuous Robespierre, 
your father perished a hero and a martyr in the 
massacre of the coup (f^tat — you, cultured in the 
eloquence of Robespierre himself, and in the 
])ersuasive philosophy of Robespierre’s teacher, 
Rousseau — you, the idolized orator of the Red 
Republicans — you will be indeed a chief of daunt- 
less bands when the trumpet sounds for battle. 
Young publicist and poet, Gustave Rameau — I 
care not which you are at present, I know what 
you Avill be soon — you need nothing for the de- 
velopment of your powers over the many but an 
organ for their manifestation. Of that anon. 1 
now descend into the bathos of egotism. I am 
compelled lastly to speak of myself. It was at 
Marseilles and Lyons, as you already know, that 
I first conceived the jdan of this representative 
association. For years before I had been in fa- 
miliar intercourse with the Mends of freedom — 
that is, with the foes of the empire. They are 
not all poor. Some few are rich and generous. 

I do not say these rich and few concur in the 
ultimate objects of the poor and many. But 
they concur in the first object, the demolition 
of that which exists — the empire. In the course 
of my special calling of negotiator or agent in 
the towns of the Midi, I formed friendships with 
some of these prosperous malcontents. And out 
of these friendships I conceived the idea which 
is embodied in this council. 

“According to that conception, while the 
council may communicate as it will with all so- 
cieties, secret or open, having revolution for their 
object, the council refuses to merge itself in any 
other confederation : it stands aloof and inde- 
pendent; it declines to admit into its code any 
special articles of faith in a future beyond the 
bounds to which it limits its design and its force. 
That design unites us ; to go beyond would di- 
vide. We all agree to destroy the Napoleonic 
dynasty ; none of us might agree as to what we 
should place in its stead. AU of us here present 
might say, ‘ A republic.’ Ay, but of what kind ? 
Vanderstegen would have it socialistic; Mon- 
nier goes further, and would have it communist- 
ic, on the principles of Fourier; Le Noy ad- 
heres to the policy of Dan ton , and would com- 
mence the republic by a reign of terror; our 
Italian ally abhors the notion of general massa- 
cre, and advocates individual assassination. Ru- 
vigny would annihilate the worship of a Deity ; 
Monnier holds, with Voltaire and Robespierre, 
that ‘ if there were no Deity^ it would be neces- 
sary to Man to create one.’ we could not 

agree upon any plan for the new edifice, and 
therefore we refuse to discuss one till the plow- 
share has gone over the ruins of the old. But 
I have another and more practical reason for 
keeping our council distinct from all societies 
with professed objects beyond that of demoli- 
tion. We need a certain command of money. 
It is I who bring to you that, and — how? Not 
from my OAvn resources ; they but suffice to sup- 
])ort mj^self. Not by contributions from ouvriers, 
who, as you well know, will subscribe only for 
their own ends in the victory of workmen over 
masters. I bring money to you from the coffers 
of the rich malcontents. Their politics are not 


those of most present ; their politics are what 
they term moderate. Some are, indeed, for a 
republic, but for a republic strong in defense of 
order, in support of property ; others — and they 
are the more numerous and the more rich — for 
a constitutional monarchy, and, if possible, for 
the abridgment of universal suffrage, which, in 
their eyes, tends only to anarchy in the towns 
and arbitrary rule under priestly influence in the 
rural districts. They would not subscribe a sou 
if they thought it went to further the designs 
whether of Ruvigny the atheist, or of Monnier, 
who would enlist the Deity of Rousseau on the 
side of the drapeau rouge — not a sou if they knew 
I had the honor to boast such confreres as I see 
around me. They subscribe, as we concert, for 
the fall of Bonaparte. The policy I adopt I 
borrow from the policy of the English Liber- 
als. In England, potent millionnaires, high-born 
dukes, devoted Churchmen, belonging to the 
Liberal party, accept the services of men who 
look forward to measures which would ruin 
capital, eradicate aristocracy, and destroy the 
Church, provided these men combine with them 
in some immediate step onward against the To- 
ries. They have a proverb which I thus adapt 
to French localities : If a train passes Fontaine- 
bleau on its way to Marseilles, why should I not 
take it to Fontainebleau because other passen- 
gers are going on to JMarseilles ? 

Confreres, it seems to me the moment has 
come when we may venture some of the fund 
placed at my disposal to other purposes than 
those to which it has been hitherto devoted. I 
propose, therefore, to set up a journal under the 
auspices of Gustave Rameau as editor-in-chief — 
a journal which, if he listen to my advice, will 
create no small sensation. It will begin with a 
tone of impartiality : it will refrain from all vio- 
lence of invective ; it will have wit ; it will have 
sentiment and eloquence; it will win its way 
into the salons and cafes of educated men ; and 
then — and then — when it does change from pol- 
ished satire into fierce denunciation, and sides 
with the blouses, its effect will be startling and 
terrific. Of this I will say more to Citizen Ra- 
meau in private. To you I need not enlarge 
upon the fact that, at Paris, a combination of 
men, though immeasurably superior to us in 
status or influence, without a journal at com- 
mand, is nowhere ; with such a journal, written 
not to alarm but to seduce fluctuating opinions, 
a combination of men immeasurably inferior to 
us may be any where. 

‘ ‘ Confreres, this affair settled, I proceed to 
distribute among you sums of which each who 
receives will render me an account, except our 
valued confrere the Pole. All that we can sub- 
scribe to the cause of humanity a representative 
of Poland requires for himself.” (A suppressed 
laugh among all but the Pole, who looked round ■ 
with a grave, imposing air, as much as to say,jl 
“What is there to laugh at? — a simple truth.”}* 

M. Lebeau then presented to each of his co«-b 
freres a sealed envelope, containing, no doubt,* 
a bank-note, and perhaps also private instruc- 
tions as to its disposal. It was one of his rules . 
to make the amount of any sum granted to an in- J 
dividual member of the society from the fund at 
his disposal a confidential secret between him- 
self and the recipient. Thus jealousy was avoid- 
ed if the sums were unequal ; and unequal they ■ 


THE PARISIANS. 


101 


generally were. In the present instance the two 
largest sums were given to the Medecin des Pau- 
vres and to the delegate from Verviers. Both 
were, no doubt, to be distributed among “ the 
poor,” at the discretion of the trustee appointed. 

Whatever rules with regard to the distribution 
of money M. Lebeau laid down were acquiesced 
in without demur, for the money was found ex- 
clusively by himself, and furnished without the 
pale of the Secret Council, of which he had made 
himself founder and dictator. Some other busi- 
ness was then discussed, sealed reports from 
each member were handed to the president, who 
placed them unopened in his pocket, and re- 
sumed : 

“ Con freres, our stance is now concluded. The 
period for our next meeting must remain indefi- 
nite, for I myself shall leave Paris as soon as I 
have set on foot the journal, on the details of 
which I will confer with Citizen Rameau. I am 
not satisfied with the progress made by the two 
traveling missionaries who complete our Council 
of Ten ; and though I do not question their zeal, 
I think my experience may guide it if I take a 
journey to the towns of Bordeaux and Marseilles, 
where they now are. But should circumstances 
demanding concert or action arise, you may be 
sure that I will either summon a meeting or 
transmit instructions to such of our members as 
may be most usefully employed. For the pres- 
ent, confreres, you are relieved. Remain only 
you, dear young author.” 


CHAPTER Vir. 

Left alone with Gustave Rameau, the presi- 
dent of the Secret Council remained silently mus- 
ing for some moments ; but his countenance was 
no longer moody and overcast — his nostrils were 
dilated, as in triumph — there was a half smile of 
pride on his lips. Rameau watched him curious- 
ly and admiringly. The young man had the im- 
pressionable, excitable temperament common to 
Parisian genius — especially when it nourishes it- 
self on absinthe. He enjoyed the romance of be- 
longing to a secret society ; he was acute enough 
to recognize the sagacity by which this small con- 
clave was kept out of those crazed combinations 
for impracticable theories more likely to lead ad- 
venturers to the Tarpeian Rock than to the Capi- 
tol, while yet those crazed combinations might, in 
some critical moment, become strong instruments 
in the hands of practical ambition. Lebeau fas- 
cinated him, and took colossal proportions in his 
intoxicated vision — vision indeed intoxicated at 
this moment, for before it floated the realized 
image of his aspirations — a journal of which he 
was to be the editor-in-chief — in which his po- 
etry, his prose, should occupy space as large as 
he pleased — through which his name, hitherto 
scarce known beyond a literary clique, would re- 
sound in sa/on and club and cafe, and become a 
familiar music on the lips of fashion. And he 
owed this to the man seated there — a prodigious 
man ! 

’‘‘‘Cher poUe," said Lebeau, breaking silence, 

“ it gives me no mean pleasure to think I am 
opening a career to one whose talents fit him j 
for those goals on which they who reach write 
names that posterity shall read. Struck with 


certain articles of yours in the journal made 
celebrated by the wit and gayety of Savarin, I 
took pains privately to inquire into your birth, 
your history, connections, antecedents. All con- 
firmed my first impression, that you were exact- 
ly the writer I wish to secure to our cause. I 
therefore sought you in your rooms, unintro- 
duced and a stranger, in order to express my 
admiration of your compositions. Bref, we soon 
became friends ; and after comparing minds I 
admitted you, at your request, into this Secret 
Council. Now, in proposing to you the conduct 
of the journal I would establish, for which I am 
prepared to find all necessary funds, I am com- 
pelled to make imperative conditions. Nomi- 
nally you will be editor-in-chief : that station, if 
the journal succeeds, will secure you position and 
fortune ; if it fail, you fail with it. But we will 
not speak of failure; I must have.it succeed. 
Our interest, then, is the same. Before that in- 
terest all puerile vanities fade away. Nominal- 
ly, I say, you are editor-in-chief ; but all the real 
work of editing will at first be done by others. ” 

“Ah !”exclaimed Rameau,aghast and stunned. 
Lebeau resumed : 

“To establish the journal I propose needs 
more than the genius of youth ; it needs the 
tact and experience of mature years.” 

Rameau sank back on his cluiir with a sullen 
sneer on his pale lips. Decidedly Lebeau was 
not so great a man as he had thought. 

“A certain portion of the journal,” continued 
Lebeau, “will be exclusively appropriated to 
your pen.” 

Rameau’s lip lost the sneer. 

“But your pen must be therein restricted to 
compositions of pure fancy, disporting in a world 
that does not exist ; or, if on graver themes con- 
nected with the beings of the world that does ex- 
ist, the subjects will be dictated to you and re- 
vised. Yet even in the higher departments of a 
journal intended to make way at its first start, 
we need the aid not, indeed, of men that write 
better than you, but of men whose fame is estab- 
lished — whose writings, good or bad, tlie public 
run to read, and will find good even if they are 
bad. You must consign one column to the play- 
ful comments and witticisms of Savarin.” 

“ Savarin ? But he has a journal of his own. 
He will not, as an author, condescend to write 
in one just set up by me. And as a politician, 
he as certainly will not aid in an ultra-democratic 
revolution. If he care for politics at all, he is a 
constitutionalist, an Orleanist. ” 

‘‘‘‘Enfant! as an author Savarin will conde- 
scend to contribute to your journal, firstly, be- 
cause it in no way attempts to interfere with his 
own ; secondly — I can tell you a secret — Sava- 
rin’s journal no longer suffices for his existence ; 
he has sold more than two-thirds of its property ; 
he is in debt, and his creditor is urgent ; and to- 
morrow you will offer Savann 30,000 francs for 
one column from his pen, and signed by his name, 
for two months from the day the journal starts. 
He will accept, partly because the sum will clear 
off the debt that hampers him, partly because he 
will take care that the amount becomes known ; 
and that will help him to command higher terms 
for the sale of the remaining shares in the jour- 
nal he now edits, for the new book which you 
told me he intended to write, and for the new 
journal which he will be sure to set up as soon 


102 


THE PARISIANS. 


as he has disposed of the old one. You say that, 
as a politician, Savarin, an Orleanist, will not aid 
in an ultra-democratic revolution. Who asks 
him to do so ? Did I not imply at the meeting 
that we commence our journal with politics the 
mildest ? Though revolutions are not made with 
rose-water, it is rose-water that nourishes their 
roots. The polite cynicism of authors, read by 
those who float on the surface of society, prepares 
the w'ay for the social ferment in its deeps. Had 
there been no Voltaire, there would have been no 
Camille Desmoulins. Had there been no Dide- 
rot, there would have been no Marat. We start 
as polite cynics. Of all cynics Savarin is the po- 
litest. But when I bid high for him, it is his 
clique that I bid for. Without his clique he is but 
a wit ; with his clique, a power. Partly out of 
that clique, partly out of a circle beyond it, 
which Savarin can more or less influence, I se- 
lect ten. Here is the list of them ; study it. 
Entre nous, I esteem their writings as little as I 
do artificial flies ; but they are the artificial flies 
at which, in this particular season of the year, the 
public rise. You must procure at least five of 
the ten ; and I leave you carte blanche as to the 
terms. Savarin gained, the best of them will be 
proud of being his associates. Observe, none of 
these messieurs of brilliant imagination are to 
write political articles ; those will be furnished 
to you anonymously, and inserted without eras- 
ure or omission. When you have secured Sava- 
rin, and five at least of the collahorateurs in the 
list, w'rite to me at my office. I give you four 
days to do' this ; and the day the journal starts 
you enter into the income of 1.5,000 francs a year, 
with a rise in salary proportioned to profits. Are 
you contented with the terms ?” 

“ Of course 1 am ; but supposing I do not gain 
the aid of Savarin, or five at least of the list you 
give, which I see at a glance contains names the 
most a la mode in this kind of writing, more than 
one of them of high social rank, whom it is diffi- 
cult for me even to approach — if, I say, I fail ?” 

“What! with a carte blanche of terms? fie! 
Are you a Parisian ? Well, to answer you frank- 
ly, if you fail in so easy a task you are not the 
man to edit our journal, and I shall find another. 
Allez, courage! Take my advice; see Savarin 
the first thing to-morrow morning. Of course 
my name and calling you will keep a profound 
secret from him as from all. Say as mysterious- 
ly as you can that parties you are forbidden to 
name instruct you to treat with M. Savarin, and 
offer him the terms I have specified, the 30,000 
francs paid to him in advance the moment he 
signs the simple memorandum of agreement. 
The more mysterious you are, the more you will 
impose — that is, wherever you offer money and 
don’t ask for it.” 

Here Lebeau took up his hat, and with a court- 
eous nod of adieu, lightly descended the gloomy 
stairs. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

At night, after this final interview with Le- 
beau, Graham took leave for good of his lodg- 
ings in Montmartre, and returned to his apart- 
ment in the Rue d’Anjou. He spent several 
hours of the next morning in answering numer- 
ous letters accumulated during his absence. 


Late in the afternoon he had an interview with 
M. Renard, who, as at that season of the year 
he was not overbusied with other affairs, engaged 
to obtain leave to place his services at Graham’s 
command during the time requisite for inquiries 
at Aix, and to be in readiness to start the next 
day. Graham then went forth to pay one or 
two farewell visits, and these over, bent his way 
through the Champs Elysees toward Isaura’s 
villa, when he suddenly encountered Rochebri- 
ant on horseback. The Marquis courteously 
dismounted, committing his horse to the care of 
the groom, and linking his arm in Graham’s, ex- 
pressed his pleasure at seeing him again ; then, 
with some visible hesitation and embarrassment, 
he turned the conversation toward the political 
aspect of France. 

“There was,” he said, “much in certain 
words of yours when we last walked together in 
this very path that sank deeply into my mind at 
the time, and over which I have of late still 
more earnestly reflected. You spoke of the du- 
ties a Frenchman ow'ed to France, and the ‘im- 
policy’ of remaining aloof from all public em- 
ployment on the part of those attached to the 
Legitimist cause.” 

“ True, it can not be the policy of any party 
to forget that between the irrevocable past and 
the uncertain future there intervenes the action 
of the present time.” 

“ Should you, as an impartial by-stander, con- 
sider it dishonorable in me if I entered the mili- 
tary service under the ruling sovereign ?” 

“Certainly not, if your country needed you.” 

“ And it may, may it not? I hear vague ru- 
mors of coming war in almost every salon I fre- 
quent. There has been gunpowder in the at- 
mosphere we breathe ever since the battle of Sa- 
dowa. What think you of German arrogance 
and ambition ? Will they suffer the swords of 
France to rust in their scabbards ?” 

“ My dear Marquis, I should incline to put the 
question otherwise. Will the jealous amour pro- 
pre of France permit the swords of Germany to 
remain sheathed ? But in either case no politi- 
cian can see without grave apprehension two na- 
tions so warlike, close to each other, divided by 
a border-land that one covets and the other will 
not yield, each armed to the teeth ; the one re- 
solved to brook no rival, the other equally deter- 
mined to resist all aggression. And therefore, 
as you say, war is in the atmosphere ; and we 
may also hear, in the clouds that give no sign 
of dispersion, the growl of the gathering thun- 
der. War may come aiiy day ; and if France 
be not at once the victor — ” 

“France not at once the victor!” interrupted 
Alain, passionately; “and against a Prussian! 
Permit me to say no Frenchman can believe 
that.” 

“Let no man despise a foe,” said Graham, 
smiling half sadly. “ However, I must not in- 
cur the danger of wounding your national sus- 
ceptibilities. To return to the point you raise. 
If France needed the aid of her best and bravest, 
a true descendant of Henri Quatre ought to blush 
for his ancient noblesse were a Rochebriant to 
say, ‘ But I don’t like the color of the flag.’ ” 

“Thank you,” said Alain, simply; “that is 
enough.” There was a pause, the young men 
walking on slowly, arm in arm. And then 
there flashed across Graham’s mind the recollec- 


THE PARISIANS. 


103 


tion of talk on another subject in that very path. 
Here he had spoken to Alain in deprecation 
of any possible alliance with Isaura Cicogna, the 
destined actress and public singer. His cheek 
flushed ; his heart smote him. What ! had he 
spoken slightingly of her — of her? What — if 
she became his own wife ? What ! had he him- 
self failed in the respect which he would demand 
as her right from the loftiest of his high-born 
kindred ? What, too, would this man, of fairer 
youth than himself, think of that disparaging 
counsel, when he heard that the monitor had 
won the prize from which he had warned anoth- 
er? Would it not seem that he had but spoken 
in the mean cunning dictated by the fear of a 
worthier rival? Stung by these thoughts, he 
arrested his steps, and, looking the Marquis full 
in the face, said, “You remind me of one sub- 
ject in our talk many weeks since ; it is my duty 
to remind you of another. At that time you, 
and, speaking frankly, I myself, acknowledged 
the charm in the face of a young Italian lady. I 
told you then that, on learning she was intended 
for the stage, the charm for me had vanished. 
I said, bluntly, that it should vanish perhaps still 
more utterly for a noble of your illustrious name; 
you remember ?” 

“Yes,” answered Alain, hesitatingly, and 
with a look of surprise. 

“I wish now to retract all I said thereon. 
Mademoiselle Cicogna is not bent on the pro- 
fession for which she was educated. She would 
willingly renounce all idea of entering it. The 
only counter- weight which, viewed whether by 
my reason or my prejudices, could be placed 
in the opposite scale to that of the excellences 
which might make any man proud to win her, is 
withdrawn. I have become acquainted with her 
since the date of our conversation. Hers is a 
mind which harmonizes with the loveliness of 
her face. In one word, Marquis, I should deem 
myself honored, as well as blessed, by such a 
bride. It was due to her that I should say this ; 
it was due also to you, in case you retain the 
impression I sought in ignorance to efface. And 
I am bound, as a gentleman, to obey this two- 
fold duty, even though in so doing I bring upon 
myself the affliction of a candidate for the hand 
to which I would fain myself aspire — a candi- 
date with pretensions in every way far superior 
to my own. ” 

An older or a more cynical man than Alain de 
Rochebriant might well have found something 
suspicious in a confession thus singularly volun- 
teered ; but the Marquis was himself so loyal 
that he had no doubt of the loyalty of Graham. 

“I reply to you,” he said, “ with a frankness 
which finds an example in your own. The first 
fair face which attracted my flmcy since my ar- 
rival at Paris was that of the Italian demoiselle 
of whom you speak in terms of such respect. I 
do think if I had then been thrown into her so- 
ciety, and found her to be such as you no doubt 
truthfully describe, that fancy might have be- 
come a very grave emotion. I was then so poor, 
so friendless, so despondent. Your words of 
warning impressed me at the time, but less dura- 
bly than you might suppose ; for that very night, 
as I sat in my solitary attic, I said to myself : 

‘ Why should I shrink, with an obsolete old-world 
prejudice, from what my forefathers would have 
termed a mesalliance ? What is the value of 
H 


my birthright now ? None — worse than none. 
It excludes me from all careers ; my name is but 
a load that weighs me down. Why should I 
make that name a curse as well as a burden? 
Nothing is left to me but that which is permitted 
to all men — wedded and holy love. Could I win 
to my heart the smile of a woman who brings me 
that dower, the home of my fathers would lose 
its gloom.’ And therefore, if at that time I had 
become familiarly acquainted with her wlp had 
thus attracted my eye and engaged my thoughts, 
she might have become my destiny ; but now!” 

“But now?” 

“Things have changed. I am no longer 
poor, friendless, solitary. I have entered the 
world of my equals as a Rochebriant ; I have 
made myself responsible for the dignity of my 
name. 1 could not give that name to one, how- 
ever peerless in herself, of whom the world would 
say, ‘ But for her marriage she would have been 
a singer on the stage 1 ’ I will own more : the 
fancy I conceived for the first fair face other 
fair faces have dispelled. At this moment, how- 
ever, I have no thought of marriage ; and having 
known the anguish of struggle, the privations of 
poverty, I would ask no woman to share the haz- 
ard of my return to them. You might present me, 
then, safely to this beautiful Italian — certain, 
indeed, that I should be her admirer, equally 
certain that I could not become your rival. ” 

There was something in this speech that jarred 
upon Graham’s sensitive pride. But, on the 
whole, he felt relieved, both in honor and in 
heart. After a few more words the two young 
men shook hands and parted. Alain remounted 
his horse. The day W'as now declining. Graham 
hailed a vacant fiacre^ and directed the driver to 
Isaura’s villa. 


CHAPTER IX. 

ISAURA. 

The sun was sinking slowly as Isaura sat at 
her window, gazing dreamily on the rose-hued 
clouds that made the western border-land be- 
tween earth and heaven. On the table before 
her lay a few sheets of MS. hastily written, not 
yet reperused. That restless mind of hers had 
left its trace on the MS. 

It is characteristic, perhaps, of the different 
genius of the sexes that woman takes to written 
composition more impulsively, more intuitively, 
than man — letter-writing to him a task-work, is to 
her a recreation. Between the age of sixteen and 
the date of marriage six well-educated, clever girls 
out of ten keep a journal ; not one well-educated 
man in ten thousand does. So, without serious 
and settled intention of becoming an author, how 
naturally a girl of ardent feeling and vivid fancy 
seeks in poetry or romance a confessional — an 
outpouring of thought anti sentiment, which are 
mysteries to herself till she has given them 
words — and which, frankly revealed on the page, 
she would not, perhaps could not, utter orally to 
a living ear. 

During the last few days the desire to create 
in the realm of fable beings constructed by her 
own breath, spiritualized by her own soul, had 
grown irresistibly upon this fair child of song. 
In fact, when Graham’s words had decided the 
renunciation of her destined career, her instinct- 


104 


THE PARISIANS. 


ive yearnings for the utterance of those senti- 
ments or thoughts which can only find expres- 
sion in some form of art, denied the one vent, 
irresistibly impelled her to the other. And in 
this impulse she was confirmed by the thought 
tliat here at least there was nothing which her 
English friend could disapprove — none of the 
perils that beset the actress. Here it seemed as 
if, could she but succeed, her fame would be 
grateful to the pride of all who loved her. Here 
was a career ennobled by many a woman, and 
side by side in rivalry with renowned men. To 
her it seemed that, could she in this achieve an 
honored name, that name took its place at once 
amidst the higher ranks of the social Avorld, and 
in itself brought a priceless dowry and a starry 
crown. It was, however, not till after the visit 
to Enghien that this ambition took practical life 
and form. 

One evening after her return to Paris, by an 
effort so involuntary that it seemed to her no ef- 
fort, she had commenced a tale — without plan, 
without method — without knowing in one page 
what would fill the next. Her slight fingers 
hurried on as if, like the pretended spirit mani- 
festations, impelled by an invisible agency with- 
out the pale of the world. She was intoxicated 
by the mere joy of inventing ideal images. In 
her own special art an elaborate artist, here she 
had no thought of art ; if ait was in her work, 
it sprang unconsciously from the harmony be- 
tween herself and her subject — as it is, perhaps, 
with the early soarings of the genuine lyric poets, 
in contrast to the dramatic. For the true lyric 
poet is intensely personal, intensely subjective. 
It is himself that he expresses — that he rejire- 
sents — and he almost ceases to be lyrical when 
he seeks to go out of his own existence into that 
of others with whom he has no sympathy, no 
rapport. This tale was vivid with genius as yet 
untutored — genius in its morning freshness, full 
of beauties, full of faults. Isaura distinguished 
not the faults from the beauties. She felt only 
a vague persuasion that there was a something 
higher and brighter — a something more true to 
her own idiosyncrasy — than could be achieved 
by the art that “sings other people's words to 
other people’s music.” From the work thus 
commenced she had now paused. And it seem- 
ed to her fancies that between her inner self and 
the scene without, whether in the skies and air 
and sunset, or in the abodes of men stretching 
far and near, till lost amidst the roofs and domes 
of the great city, she had fixed and riveted the 
link of a sympathy hitherto fluctuating, unsub- 
stantial, evanescent, undefined. Absorbed in her 
reverie, she did not notice the deepening of the 
short twilight till the servant entering drew the 
curtains between her and the w’orld without, and 
placed the lamp on the table beside her. Then 
she turned away with, a restless sigh, her eyes 
fell on the MS., but the charm of it was gone. 
A sentiment of distrust in its worth had crept 
into her thoughts, unconsciously to herself, and 
the page open before her at an uncompleted sen- 
tence seemed unwelcome and wearisome as a 
copy-book is to a child condemned to relinquish 
a fairy tale half told, and apply himself to a task 
half done. She fell again into a reverie, when, 
starting as from a dream, she heard herself ad- 
dressed by name, and turning round, saw Savarin 
and Gustave Rameau in the room. 


“ We are come, signorina,” said Savarin, “ to 
announce to you a piece of news, and to hazard 
a petition. The news is this : my young friend 
here has found a Maecenas who has the good 
taste so to admire his lucubrations under the 
nom de plume of Alphonse de Valcour as to vol- 
unteer the expenses for starting a new journal, 
of which Gustave Rameau is to be editor-in- 
chief; and I have promised to assist him as con- 
tributor for the first two months. I have given 
him notes of introduction to certain other feu- 
illetonistes and critics whom he has on his list. 
But all ])ut together would not serve to float the 
journal like a short roman from Madame de 
Grantmesnil. Knowing your intimacy with that 
eminent artist, I venture to back Rameau’s sup- 
plication that you would exert your influence on 
Ids behalf. As to the honoraires, she has but to 
name them.” 

“ Carte i/awc/ic,” cried Rameau, eagerly. 

“You know Eulalie too well, M. Savarin,” 
answered Isaura, with a smile half reproachful, 
“to suppose that she is a mercenary in letters, 
and sells her services to the best bidder.” 

“Bah, helle enfant!” said Savarin, with his 
gay light laugh. “ Business is business, and 
books as well as razors are made to sell. But, 
of course, a proper prospectus of the journal 
must accompany your request to write in it. 
Meanwhile Rameau will explain to you, as he 
has done to me, that the journal in question is 
designed for circulation among readers of haute 
classe: it is to be pleasant and airy, full of bons 
mots and anecdote; witty, but not ill-natured. 
Politics to be liberal, of course, but of elegant 
admixture — Champagne and seltzer-water. In 
fact, however, I suspect that the politics will be 
a very inconsiderable feature in this organ of 
fine arts and manners ; some amateur scribbler 
in the ‘ beau monde' will supply them. For the 
rest, if my introductory letters are successful, 
Madame de Grantmesnil will not be in bad 
company.” 

“You will write to Madame de Grantmesnil ?” 
asked Rameau, pleadingly. 

“ Certainly I will, as soon — ” ( 

“As soon as you have the prospectus, and the 
names of the collaborateurs” interrupted Rameau. 
“I hope to send you these in a very few days.” 

While Rameau was thus speaking Savarin had 
seated himself by the table, and his eye mechan- 
ically resting on the open MS., lighted by chance 
upon a sentence — an aphorism — embodying a 
very delicate sentiment in very felicitous diction. 
One of those choice condensations of thought, 
suggesting so much more than is said, which are 
never found in mediocre writers, and, rare even 
in the best, come upon us like truths seized by 
surprise. 

Parbleu !” exclaimed-Savarin, in the impulse 
of genuine admiration, “but this is beautiful; 
wliat is more, it is original ;” and he read the 
words aloud. Blushing with shame and resent- 
ment, Isaura turned and hastily placed her hand 
on the MS. 

“ Pardon,” said Savarin, humbly ; “I confess 
my sin, but it was so unpremeditated that it 
does not merit a severe penance. Do not look 
at me so reproachfully. We all know that young 
ladies keep commonplace-books in which they 
enter passages that strike them in the works 
they read. And you have but shown an exqui- 


THE PARISIANS. 


105 


site taste in selecting this gem. Eo tell me 
where you found it. Is it somewhere in Lamar- 
tine?” 

‘‘ No,” answered Isaura, half inaudibly, and 
with an effort to withdraw the paper. Savarin 
gently detained her hand, and looking earnestly 
into her tell-tale face, divined her secret. 

“It is your own, signorina! Accept the 
congratulations of a very practiced and some- 
what fastidious critic. If the rest of what you 
write resembles this sentence, contribute to Ra- 
meau’s journal, and I answer for its success.” 

Rameau approached, half incredulous, half 
envious. 

“ My dear child,” resumed Savarin, drawing 
away the MS. from Isaura’s coy, reluctant clasp, 
‘ ‘ do permit me to cast a glance over these pa- 
pers. For what I yet know, there may be here 
more promise of fame than even you could gain 
as a singer.” 

The electric chord in Isaura’s heart was touch- 
ed. Who can not conceive what the young 
writer feels, especially the young woman-writer, 
when hearing the first cheery note of praise from 
the lips of a writer of established fame ? 

“Nay, this can not be worth your reading,” 
said Isaura, falteringly; “I have never written 
any thing of the kind before, and this is a riddle 
to me. I know not,” she added, with a sweet 
low laugh, “ why I began, nor how I should end 
it.” 

*‘So much the better,” said Savarin ; and he 
took, the MS. , withdrew to a recess by the fur- 
ther window, and seated himself there, reading 
silently and quickly, but now and then with a 
brief pause of reflection. 

Rameau placed himself beside Isaura on the 
divan, and began talking with her earnestly — 
earnestly, for it was about himself and his as- 
piring hopes. Isaura, on the other hand, more 
woman-like than author-like, ashamed even to 
seem absorbed in herself and her hopes, and 
with her back turned, in the instinct of that 
shame, against the reader of her MS. — Isaura 
listened and sought to mterest herself solely in 
the young fellow-author. Seeking to do so, she 
succeeded genuinely, for ready sympathy was a 
prevalent characteristic of her nature. 

“Oh,” said Rameau, “I am at the turning- 
point of my life. Ever since boyhood I have 
been haunted with the words of Andre Chenier 
on the morning he was led to the scaffold : ‘ And 
yet there was something here,’ striking his fore- 
head. Yes, I, poor, low-born, launching my- 
self headlong in the chase of a name ; I, under- 
rated, uncomprehended, indebted even for a 
hearing to the patronage of an amiable trifler 
like Savarin, ranked by petty rivals in a grade 
below themselves — I now see before me, sudden- 
ly, abruptly presented, the expanding gates into 
fame and fortune. Assist me, you !” 

“But how?” said Isaura, already forgetting 
her MS. ; and certainly Rameau did not refer to 
that. 

“ Hoav !” echoed Rameau. “ How ! But do 
you not see — or, at least, do you not conjecture 
— this journal of which Savarin speaks contains 
my present and my future ? Present independ- 
ence, opening to fortune and renown. Ay — and 
who shall say ? — renown beyond that of the mere 
writer. Behind the gaudy scaffolding of this 
rickety empire a new social edifice unperceived 


arises ; and in that edifice the halls of state shall 
be given to the men who help obscurely to build 
it — to men like me.” Here, drawing her hand 
into his own, fixing on her the most imploring 
gaze of his dark persuasive eyes, and utterly un- 
conscious of bathos in his adjuration, he added, 
“ Plead for me with your whole mind and heart ; 
use your uttermost influence with the illustrious 
writer, whose pen can assure the fates of my 
journal.” 

Here the door suddenly opened, and following 
the servant, who announced unintelligibly his 
name, there entered Graham Vane. 


CHAPTER X. 

The Englishman halted at the threshold. 
His eye, passing rapidly over the figure of Sava- 
rin reading in the window niche, rested upon 
Rameau and Isaura seated on the same divan, 
he with her hand clasped in both his own, and 
bending his face toward hers so closely that a 
loose tress of her hair seemed to touch his fore- 
head. 

The Englishman halted, and no revolution 
which changes the habitudes and forms of states 
was ever so sudden as that which passed without 
a word in the depths of his unconjectured heart. 
The heart has no histoiy which philosophers can 
recognize. An ordinary political observer, con- 
templating the condition of a nation, may very 
safely tell us what effects must follow the causes 
patent to his eyes. But the wisest and most 
far-seeing sage, looking at a man at one o’clock, 
can not tell us what revulsions of his whole being 
may be made ere the clock strike two. 

As Isaura rose to greet her visitor Savarin 
came from the window niche, the MS. in his 
hand. 

“ Son of perfidious Albion,” said Savarin, gay- 
ly, ‘ ‘ we feared you had deserted the French al- 
liance. Welcome back to Paris, and the entente 
cordiale." 

“ Would I could stay to enjoy such welcome. 
But I must again quit Paris.” 

“ Soon to return, n'est ce past Paris is an 
irresistible magnet to les beaux esprits. Apro- 
pos of beaux esprits, be sure to leave orders with 
your bookseller, if you have one, to enter your 
name as subscriber to a new' journal.” 

“ Certainly, if M. Savarin recommends it.” 

“He recommends it as a matter of course ; he 
wnites in it,” said Rameau. 

“A sufficient guarantee for its excellence. 
What is the name of the journal ?” 

“Not yet thought of,” ausw'ered Savarin. 
“Babes must be born before they are christen- 
ed ; but it will be instruction enough to your 
bookseller to order the new journal to be edited 
by Gustave Rameau.” 

Bowing ceremoniously to the editor in pros- 
pect, Graham said, half ironically, “ May I hope 
that in the department of criticism you will not 
be too hard upon poor Tasso ?” 

“ Never fear ; the signorina, who adores Tas- 
so, w'ill take him under her special protection,” 
said Savarin, interrupting Rameau’s sullen and 
embarrassed reply. 

Graham’s brow slightly contracted. “ Made- 
moiselle,” he said, “is then to be united in the 


106 


THE PARISIANS. 


conduct of this journal with M. Gustave Ra- 
meau ?” 

“No, indeed!” exclaimed Isaura, somewhat 
frightened at the idea. 

“But I hope,” said Savarin, “that the sign- 
orina may become a contributor too important 
for an editor to offend by insulting her favorites, 
Tasso included. Rameau and I came hither to 
entreat her influence with her intimate and il- 
lustrious friend, Madame de Grantmesnil, to in- 
sure the success of our undertaking by sanction- 
ing the announcement of her name as a contrib- 
utor.” 

“ Upon social questions — such as the laws of 
marriage ?” said Graham, with a sarcastic smile, 
which concealed the quiver of his lip and the 
pain in his voice. 

“Nay,” answered Savarin, “our journal will 
be too sportive, I hope, for matters so profound. 
We would rather have Madame de Grantmes- 
nil’s aid in some short roman^ which will charm 
the fancy of all and offend the opinions of none. 
But since I came into the room I care less for 
the signorina’s influence with the great author- 
ess ;” and he glanced significantly at the MS. 

“How so?” asked Graham, his eye following 
the glance. 

“ If the writer of this MS. will conclude what 
she has begun, we shall be independent of Ma- 
dame de Grantmesnil.” 

“Fie !” cried Isaura, impulsively, her face and 
neck bathed in blushes — “ fie 1 such words are a 
mockery. ” 

Graham gazed at her intently, and then turned 
his eyes on Savarin. He guessed aright the 
truth. “ Mademoiselle, then, is an author ? In 
the style of her friend Madame de Grantmes- 
nil?” 

“Bah!” said Savarin; “I should indeed be 
guilty of mockery if I paid the signorina so 
false a compliment as to say that in a first effort 
she attained to the style of one of the most fin- 
ished sovereigns of language that has ever swayed 
the literature of France. When I say, ‘ Give us 
this tale completed, and I shall be consoled if 
the journal does not gain the aid of Madame de 
Grantmesnil, ’ I mean that in these pages there 
is that nameless charm of freshness and novelty 
which compensates for many faults never commit- 
ted by a practiced pen like Madame de Grantmes- 
nil’s. My dear young lady, go on with this story 
— finish it. When finished, do not disdain any 
suggestions I may offer in the way of correction. 
And I will venture to predict to you so brilliant 
a career as author, that you will not regret should 
you resign for that career the bravos you could 
command as actress and singer.” The English- 
man pressed his hand convulsively to his heart, 
as if smitten by a sudden spasm. But as his 
eyes rested on Isaura’s face, which had become 
radiant with the enthusiastic delight of genius 
when the path it would select opens before it as 
if by a flash from heaven, whatever of jealous ir- 
ritation, whatever of selfish pain he might before 
have felt, was gone, merged in a sentiment of 
unutterable sadness and compassion. Practical 
man as he was, he knew so well all the dangers, 
all the snares, all the sorrows, all the scandals 
menacing name and fame, that in the world of 
Paris must beset the fatherless girl who, not less 
in authorship than on the stage, leaves the safe- 
guard of private life forever behind her — who 


becomes a prey to the tongues of the public. At 
Paris, how slender is the line that divides the au- 
thoress from the BoMmienne ! He sank into 
his chair silently, and passed his hand over his 
eyes, as if to shut out a vision of the future. 

Isaura in her excitement did not notice the ef- 
fect on her English visitor. She could not have 
divined such an effect as possible. On the con- 
trary, even subordinate to her joy at the thought 
that she had not mistaken the instincts which 
led her to a nobler vocation than that of the 
singer, that the cage-bar was opened, and space 
bathed in sunshine was inviting the new-felt 
wings — subordinate even to that joy was a joy 
more wholly, more simply, woman’s. “If,” 
thought she in this joy — “if this be true, my 
proud ambition is realized; all disparities of 
worth and fortune are annulled between me 
and him to whom I would bring no shame of 
mesaUia7ice Poor dreamer! poor child! 

“You will let me see what you have written,” 
said Rameau, somewhat imperiously, in the sharp 
voice habitual to him, and which pierced Gra- 
ham’s ear like a splinter of glass. 

“ No — not now ; when finished.” 

“ You will finish it ?” 

“Oh yes; how can I help it after such en- 
couragement?” She held out her hand to Sa- 
varin, who kissed it gallantly then her eyes in- 
tuitively sought Graham’s. By that time he had 
recovered his self-possession : he met her look 
tranquilly and with a smile ; but the smile chilled 
her — she knew not why. 

The conversation then passed upon books and 
authors of the day, and was chiefly supported by 
the satirical pleasantries of Savarin, who was in 
high good spirits. 

Graham, who, as we know, had come with the 
hope of seeing Isaura alone, and with the inten- 
tion of uttering words which, however guarded, 
might yet in absence serve as links of union, 
now no longer coveted that interview, no longer 
meditated those words. He soon rose to depart. 

“Will you dine with me to-morrow?” asked 
Savarin. “Perhaps I may induce the signorina 
and Rameau to offer you the temptation of meet- 
ing them.” 

“By to-morrow I shall be leagues away.” 

Isaura’s heart sank. This time the MS. was 
fairly forgotten. 

“You never said you were going so soon,” 
cried Savarin. “ When do you come back, vile 
deserter ?” 

“I can not even guess. Monsieur Rameau, 
count me among your subscribers. Mademoi- 
selle, my best regards to Signora Venosta. 
When I see. you again, no doubt you will have 
become famous.” 

Isaura here could not control herself. She rose 
impulsively, and approached him, holding out her 
hand, and attempting a smile. 

“ But not famous in the way that you warned 
me from,” she said, in whispered tones. “You 
are friends with me still ?” It was like the pite- 
ous wail of a child seeking to make it up with 
one who wants to quarrel, the child knows not 
why. 

Graham was moved, but what could he say? 
Could he have the right to warn her from this 
profession also, forbid all desires, all roads of 
fame to this brilliant aspirant ? Even a declared 
and accepted lover might well have deemed that 


THE PARISIANS. 


that would be to ask too much. He replied, 
“ Yes, always a friend, if you could ever need 
one.” Her hand slid from his, and she turned 
away, w’ounded to the quick. 

“Have you your coup€ at the door?” asked 
Savarin. 

“Simply a fiacre.'" 

“And are going back at once to Paris?” 

“Yes.” 

“Will vou kindly drop me in the Rue de 
Rivoli?” 

‘ ‘ Charmed to be of use. ” 


CHAPTER XI. 

As the fiacre bore to Paris Savarin and Gra- 
ham, the former said, “I can not conceive what 
rich simpleton could entertain so high an opin- 
ion of Gustave Rameau as to select a man so 
young, and of reputation, though promising, so 
undecided, for an enterprise which requires such 
a degree of tact and judgment as the conduct of 
a new journal, and a journal, too, which is to 
address itself to the beau monde. However, it is 
not for me to criticise a selection which brings a 
godsend to myself.” 

“To yourself? You jest; you have a journal 
of your own. It can only be through an excess 
of good nature that you lend your name and pen 
to the service of M. Gustave Rameau.” 

“My good nature does not go to that extent. 
It is Rameau who confers a service upon me. 
Peste ! moil cher, we French authors have not the 
rents of you rich English milords. And though I 
am the most economical of our tribe, yet that jour- 
nal of mine has failed me of late ; and this morn- 
ing I did not exactly see how I was to repay a 
sum I had been obliged to borrow of a money- 
lender — for I am too proud to borrow of friends, 
and too sagacious to borrow of publishers — when 
in walks ce cher petit Gustave with an offer for 
a few trifles toward starting this new-born jour- 
nal, which makes a new man of me. Now I am 
in the undertaking, my amour propre and my 
reputation are concerned in its success, and I 
shall take care that collahorateurs of whose com- 
pany I am not ashamed are in the same boat. 
But that charming girl, Isaura ! What an enig- 
ma the gift of the pen is ! No one can ever 
guess who has it until tried.” 

“The young lady’s MS., then, really merits 
the praise you bestowed on it ?” 

“Much more praise, though a great deal of 
blame, which I did not bestow. For in a first 
Avork faults insure success as much as beauties. 
Any thing better than tame correctness. Yes, 
her first Avork, to judge by Avhat is Avritten, must 
make a hit — a great hit. And that will decide 
her career — a singer, an actress, may retire, oft- 
en does Avhen she marries an author. But once 
an author, always an author.” 

“Ah ! is it so ? If you had a beloA^ed daugh- 
ter, Savarin, Avould you encourage her to be an 
author ?” 

“Frankly, no — principally because in that 
case the chances are that she would marry an 
author ; and French authors, at least in the im- 
aginative school, make very uncomfortable hus- 
bands. ” 

“ Ah ! you think the signorina Avill marry one 


107 

of those uncomfortable husbands — M. Rameau, 
perhaps ?” 

“ Rameau ! Hein ! nothing more likely. 
That beautiful face of his has its fascination. 
And to tell you the truth, my Avife, who is a 
striking illustration of the truth that what woman 
Avills Heaven wills, is bent upon that improve- 
ment in Gustave’s moral life Avhich she thinks a 
union with Mademoiselle Cicogna Avould achieve. 
At all events, the fair Italian Avould have in 
Rameau a husband who would not suffer her to 
bury her talents under a bushel. If she suc- 
ceeds as a Avriter (by succeeding I mean making 
money), he will see that her ink-bottle is never 
empty ; and if she don’t succeed as a writer, he 
Avill take care that the world shall gain an actress 
or a singer. For Gustave Rameau has a great 
taste for luxury and shoAv; and Avhatever his 
Avife can make, I Avill venture to say that he will 
manage to spend.” 

“ I thought you had an esteem and regard for 
Mademoiselle Cicogna. It is madame, your 
wife, I suppose, Avho- has a grudge against 
her?” 

“ On the contrary, my Avife idolizes her.” 

“Savages sacrifice to their idols the things 
they deem of value. Civilized Parisians sacri- 
fice their idols themselves — and to a thing that 
is Avorthless.” 

“ Rameau is not Avorthless ; he has beauty 
and youth and talent. My Avife thinks more 
highly of him than I do ; but I must respect a 
man who has found admirers so sincere as to set 
him up in a journal, and give him carte blanche 
for terms to contributors. I knpAv of no man in 
Paris more A'aluable to me. His Avorth to me 
this morning is 30,000 francs. I OAvn I do not 
think him likely to be a very safe husband ; but 
then French female authors and artists seldom 
take any husbands except upon short leases. 
There are no vulgar connubial prejudices in the 
pure atmosphere of art. Women of genius, like 
Madame de Grantmesnil, and perhaps like our 
charming young friend, resemble canary-birds — 
to sing their best you must separate them from 
their mates.” 

The Englishman suppressed a groan, and 
turned the conversation. 

When he had set down his lively companion. 
Vane dismissed his fiacre, and Avalked to his 
lodgings musingly. 

“ No,” he said, inly ; “ I must wrench myself 
from the very memory of that haunting face — 
the friend and pupil of Madame de Grantmesnil, 
the associate of Gustave Rameau, the rival of 
Julie Caumartin, the aspirant to that pure at- 
mosphere of art in Avhich there are no vulgar 
connubial prejudices ! Could I — Avhether I be 
rich or poor — see in her the ideal of an English 
Avife ? As it is — as it is — with this mystery 
Avhicli oppresses me, Avhich, till solved, leaves 
my OAvn career insoluble — as it is, how fortunate 
that I did not find her alone — did not utter the 
Avords that Avould fain have leaped from my heart 
— did not say, ‘I may not be the rich man I 
seem, but in tLat case I shall be yet more ambi- 
tious, because struggle and labor are the sinews 
of ambition ! Should I be rich, Avill you adorn 
my station ? should I be poor, Avill you enrich 
poverty Avith your smile ? And can you, in either 
case, forego — really, painlessly forego, as you 
led me to hope — the pride in your own art ?’ JMy 


108 


THE PARISIANS. 


ambition were killed did I many an actress, a 
singer. Better that than the hungerer after ex- 
citements which are never allayed, the struggler 
in a career which admits of no retirement — the 
woman to whom marriage is no goal — who re- 


mains to the last the property of the public, and 
glories to dwell in a house of glass into which 
eveiy by-stander has a right to jieer. Is this the 
ideal of an Englishman’s wife and home ? No, 
no ! — woe is me, no !” 


BOOK 

CHAPTEK I. 

A FEW weeks after the date of the preceding 
chapter a gay party of men were assembled at 
supper in one of the private salons of the Maison 
Dorie. The supper was given by Frederic Le- 
mercier, and the guests w’ere, though in vari- 
ous ways, more or less distinguished. Rank 
and fashion were not unworthily represented by 
Alain de Rochebriant and Enguerrand de Van- 
demar, by whose supremacy as ‘ ‘ lion” Frederic 
still felt rather humbled, though Alain had con- 
trived to bring them familiarly together. Art, 
Literature, and the Bourse had also their repre- 
sentatives — in Henri Bernard, a rising young 
portrait-painter, whom the Emperor honored 
with his patronage, the Vicomte de Breze, and 
M. Savarin. Science was not altogether for- 
gotten, but contributed its agreeable delegate in 
the person of the eminent physician to whom we 
have been before introduced — Dr. Bacourt. Doc- 
tors in Paris are not so serious as they mostly are 
in London ; and Bacourt, a pleasant philosopher 
of the school of Aristippus, was no unfrequent 
nor ungenial guest at any banquet in which the 
Graces relaxed their zones. Martial glory was 
also represented at that social gathering by a 
warrior, bronzed and decorated, lately arrived 
from Algiers, on which arid soil he had achieved 
many laurels and the rank of Colonel. Finance 
contributed Duplessis. Well it might ; for Du- 
plessis had just assisted the host to a splendid 
coup at the Bourse. . 

“Ah, cher M. Savarin,” says Enguerrand de 
Vandemar, whose patrician blood is so pure from 
revolutionary taint that he is always instinctively 
polite, “ what a masterpiece in its way is that 
little paper of yours in the Sens Commune upon 
the connection between the national character 
and the national diet, so genuinely witty! — for 
v/it is but truth made amusing.” 

“ You flatter me,” replied Savarin, modestly ; 
“ but I own I do think there is a smattering of 
philosophy in that trifle. Perhaps, however, the 
character of a people depends more on its drinks 
than its food. The wines of Italy— heady, ir- 
ritable, ruinous to the digestion — contribute to 
the character which belongs to active brains and 
disordered livers. The Italians conceive great 
plans, but they can not digest them. The En- 
glish common people drink beer, and the beerish 
character is stolid, rude, but stubborn and en- 
during. The English middle class imbibe port 
and sherry ; and with these strong potations their 
ideas become obfuscated. Their character has 
no liveliness ; amusement is not one of their 
wants ; they sit at home after dinner and doze 
away the fumes of their beverage in the dullness 
of domesticity. If the English aristocracy is 
more vivacious and cosmopolitan, it is thanks to 


SIXTH. 

the wines of France, which it is the mode "with 
them to prefer ; but still, like all plagiarists, they 
are imitators, not inventors — they borrow our 
wines and copy our manners. The Germans — ” 

“Insolent barbarians!” growled the French 
Colonel, twirling his mustache; “if the Emper- 
or were not in his dotage, their Sadowa would 
ere this have cost them their Rhine.” 

“The Germans, ” resumed Savarin, unheeding 
the interruption, “ drink acrid wines, varied with 
beer, to which last their commonalty owes a 
g'Masi-resemblance in stupidity and endurance to 
the English masses. Acrid wines rot the teeth : 
Germans are afflicted with toothache from in- 
fancy. All people subject to toothache are sen- 
timental. Goethe was a martyr to toothache. 
Werther was written in one of those parnx\ sms 
which predispose genius to suicide. But the 
German character is not all toothache ; beer and 
tobacco step in to the relief of Rhenish acridities, 
blend philosophy with sentiment, and give that 
patience in detail which distinguishes their pro- 
fessors and their generals. Besides, the German 
wines in themselves have other qualities than 
that of acridity. Taken with sauerkraut and 
stewed prunes, they produce fumes of self-con- 
ceit. A German has little of French vanity ; he 
has German self-esteem. He extends the esteem 
of self to those around him ; his home, his village, 
his city, his country — all belong to him. It is a 
duty he owes to himself to defend them. Give 
him his pipe and his sabre — and, M. le Colonel, 
believe me, you will never take the Rhine from 
him.” 

“ P-r-r, ” cried the Colonel ; ‘ ‘ but we have had 
the Rhine.” 

“ We did not keep it. And I should not say 
I had a franc-piece if I borrowed it from your 
purse and had to give it back the next day.” 

Here there arose a very general hubbub of 
voices, all raised against M. Savarin. Enguer- 
rand, like a man of good ton, hastened to change 
the conversation. 

' “Let us leave these poor Avretches to their 
sour wines and toothaches. We drinkers of the 
Champagne, all our own, have only pity for the 
rest of the human race. This new journal, Le 
Sens Conmiun, has a strange title, M. Savarin.” 

“ Yes ; Le Sens Commun is not common in 
Paris, Avhere we all have too much genius for a 
thing so vulgar.” 

“ Pray,” said the young painter, “ tell me 
what you mean by the title, Le Sens Commun. 
It is mysterious.” 

“True,” said Savarin; “ it may mean the 
Sensus communis of the Latins, or the Good 
Sense of the English. The Latin phrase signi- 
fies the sense of the common intei’est ; the En- 
glish phrase, the sense which persons of under- 
I standing have in common. I suppose the in- 


THE PARISIANS. 109 


ventor of our title meant the latter significa- 
tion.” 

“ And who was the inventor ?” asked Bacourt. 

“ That is a secret which I do net know my- 
self,” answered Savarin. 

“1 guess,” said Enguerrand, “that it must 
be the same person who writes the political lead- 
ers. They are most remarkable ; for they are 
so unlike the articles in other journals, whether 
those journals be the best or the worst. For my 
own part, I trouble my head very little about 
politics, and shrug my shoulders at essays which 
reduce the government of flesh and blood into 
mathematical problems. But these articles seem 
to be written by a man of the world, and, as a 
man of the world myself, I read them.” 

“ But,” said the Vicomte de Bre'ze, tvho 
piqued himself on the polish of his style, “ they 
are certainly not the composition of any eminent 
writer. No eloquence, no sentiment; though I 
ought not to speak disparagingly of a fellow- 
contributor.” 

“All that may be very true,” said Savarin, 
“ but M. Enguerrand is right. The papers are 
evidently the work of a man of the world, and 
it is for that reason that they have startled the 
public, and established the success of Le Sens 
Covimun. But wait a week or two longer, 
messieurs, and then tell me what you think of 
a new roman by a new writer, which we shall 
announce in our impression to-morrow. I shall 
be disappointed, indeed, if that does not charm 
you. No lack of eloquence and sentiment there. ” 

“ I am rather tired of eloquence and senti- 
ment,” said Enguerrand. “Your editor, Gus- 
tave Rameau, sickens me of them wuth his ‘ Star- 
lit Meditations in the Streets of Paris,’ morbid 
imitations of Heine’s enigmatical ‘ Evening 
Songs.’ Your journal would be perfect if you 
could suppress the editor.” 

Suppress Gustave Rameau !” cried Bernard, 
the painter ; “I adore his poems, full of heart 
for poor suffering humanity.” 

“ Suffering humanity so far as it is packed up 
in himself,” said the physician, dryly, “ and a 
great deal of the suffering is bile. But a propos 
of your new journal, Savarin, there is a para- 
graph in it to-day which excites my curiosity. 
It says that the Vicomte de Mauleon has arrived 
in Paris, after many years of foreign travel ; and 
then, referring modestly enough to the reputa- 
tion for talent which he had acquired in early 
youth, proceeds to indulge in a prophecy of the 
future political career of a man who, if he have 
a grain of sens commun^ must think that the less 
said about him the better. I remember him 
well ; a terrible mauvais sujet, but superbly hand- 
some. There was a shocking story about the jew- 
els of a foreign duchess, tvhich obliged him to 
leave Paris.” 

“ But,” said Savarin, “ the paragraph you re- 
fer to hints that that story is a groundless cal- 
umny, and that the true reason for De Mauleon’s 
voluntary self-exile was a very common one 
among young Parisians — he had lavished away 
his fortune. He returns when, either by heri- 
tage or his own exertion?;, he has secured else- 
where a competence.” 

“Nevertheless, I can not think that society 
will receive him,” said Bacourt. “When he 
left Paris, there was one joyous sigh of relief 
among all men who wished to avoid duels, and 


keep their wives out of temptation. Society 
may welcome back a lost sheep, but not a rein- 
vigorated wolf.” 

“ I beg your pardon, mon cher," said Enguer- 
rand; “society has already opened its fold to 
this poor ill-treated wolf. Two days ago Lou- 
vier summoned to his house the surviving rela- 
tions or connections of De Mauleon — among 
whom are the Marquis de Rochebriant, the 
Counts De Passy, De Beauvilliers, De Chavigny, 
rny father, and of course his two sons — and sub- 
mitted to us the proofs which completely clear 
the Vicomte de Mauleon of ev’en a suspicion of 
fraud or dishonor in the atfair of the jewels. 
The proofs include the written attestation of the 
Duke himself, and letters from that nobleman 
after De Mauleon’s disappearance from Paris, 
expressive of great esteem, and, indeed, of 
great admiration, for the Vicomte’s sense of 
honor and generosity of character. The result 
of this family council was, that we all went in 
a body to call on De Mauleon. And he dined 
with my father that same day. You know 
enough of the Count de Vandemar, and, I may 
add, of my mother, to be sure that they are 
both, in their several ways, too regardful of 
social conventions to lend their countenance 
even to a relation without well weighing the 
pros and cojis. And as for Raoul, Bayard him- 
self could not be a greater stickler on the point 
of honor.” 

This declaration was followed by a silence that 
had the character of stupor. 

At last Duplessis said, “But what has Lou- 
vier to do in this galere ? Louvier is no relation 
of that well-born vaurien. "Why should he sum- 
mon your family council ?” 

“Louvier excused his interference on the 
ground of early and intimate friendship with De 
Mauleon, who, he said, came to consult him on 
arriving at Paris, and who felt too proud or too 
timid to address relations with wdiom he had 
long dropped all intercourse. An intermediary 
was required, and Louvier volunteered to take 
that part on himself; nothing more natural, nor 
more simple. — By-the-way, Alain, you dine with 
Louvier to-morrow, do you not? — a dinner in 
honor of our rehabilitated kinsman. I and 
Raoul go.” 

“ Yes, I shall be charmed to meet again a 
man who, whatever might be his errrors in 
youth, on which,” added Alain, slightly coloring, 
“it certainly does not become me to be severe, 
must have suffered the most poignant anguish a 
man of honor can undergo — viz., honor suspect- 
ed — and who now, whether by years or sorrow, 
is so changed that I can not recognize a like- 
ness to the character I have just heard given to 
him as mauvais sujet and vaiirien." 

“ Bravo !” cried Enguerrand ; “ all honor to 
courage — and at Paris it requires great courage 
to defend the absent.” 

“Nay,” answered Alain, in alow voice. “The 
qentilhomme who will not defend another gentil- 
liomme traduced would, as a soldier, betray a cit- 
adel and desert a flag.” 

“You say M. de Maulecm is changed,” said 
De Breze' ; *^“yes, he must be growing old. No 
trace left of his good looks ?” 

“ Pardon me,” said Enguerrand, “ he is hien 
conserve, and has still a very handsome head and 
an imposing presence. But one can not help 


110 


THE PARISIANS. 


doubting whether he deserved the formidable repu- 
tation he acquired in youth ; his manner is so sin- 
gularly mild and gentle, his conversation so win- 
ningly modest, so void of pretense, and his mode 
of life is as simple as that of a Spanish hidalgo.” 

“He does not, then, affect the role of Monte 
Christo,” said Duplessis, “ and buy himself into 
notice like that hero of romance?” 

‘ ‘ Certainly not ; he says very frankly that he 
has but a very small income, but more than 
enough for his wants — richer than in his youth ; 
for he has learned content. We may dismiss the 
hint in Le Sens Commun about his future political 
career ; at least he evinces no such ambition.” 

“ How could he as a Legitimist?” said Alain, 
bitterly. ‘ ‘ What department would elect him ?” 

“ But is he a Legitimist ?” asked De Breze. 

“I take it for granted that he must be that,” 
answered Alain, haughtily, “ for he is a De 
Mauleon. ” 

“ His father was as good a De Mauleon as 
himself, I presume,” rejoined De Breze, dryly ; 
‘ ‘ and he enjoyed a place at the Court of Louis 
Philippe, which a Legitimist would scarcely ac- 
cept. Victor did not, I fancy, trouble his head 
about politics at all, at the time I remember 
him ; but to judge by his chief associates, and 
the notice he received from the Princes of the 
House of Orleans, I should guess that he had no 
predilections in favor of Henri V.” 

“ I should regret to think so,” said Alain, yet 
more haughtily, “ since the De Mauleons ac- 
knowledge the head of their house in the repre- 
sentative of the Rochebriants. ” 

“ At all events,” said Duplessis, “M. de Mau- 
le'on appears to be a philosopher of rare stamp. 
A Parisian who has known riches and is con- 
tented to be poor is a phenomenon I should 
like to study.” 

“ You have that chance to-morrow evening, 
M. Duplessis,” said Enguerrand. 

“What! at M, Louvier’s dinner? Nay, I 
have no other acquaintance Avith M. Louvier 
than that of the Bourse, and the acquaintance 
is not cordial.” 

“I did not mean M. Louvier’s dinner, but at 
the Duchesse de Tarascon’s ball You, as one 
of her special favorites, will doubtless honor her 
reunion.” 

“Yes ; I have promised my daughter to go to 
the ball. But tlie Duchesse is Imperialist. M. 
de Mauleon seems to be either a Legitimist, ac- 
cording to M. le Marquis, or an Orleanist, ac- 
cording to our friend De Breze.” 

“What of that? Can there be a more loyal 
Bourbonite than De Rochebriant ? — and he goes 
to the ball. It is given out of the season, in cele- 
bration of a family marriage. And the Duchesse 
de Tarascon is connected Avith Alain, and there- 
fore Avith De Mauleon, though but distantly. 

“Ah! excuse my ignorance of genealogy.” 

“As if the genealogy of noble names Avere 
not the history of France,” muttered Alain, in- 
dignantly. 


CHAPTER 11. 

Yes, the Sens Commun Avas a success ; it had 
made a sensation at starting ; the sensation was 
on the increase. It is difficult for an English- 
man to comprehend the full influence of a suc- 


cessful journal at Paris ; the station — political 
literary, social — Avhich it confers on the contrib- 
utors Avho effect the success. M. Lebeau had 
shoAvn much more sagacity in selecting Gustave 
Rameau for the nominal* editor than Savarin sup- 
posed or my reader might detect. In the first 
place, GustaA'e himself, Avith all his defects of 
information and solidity of intellect, Avas not 
Avithout real genius ; and a sort of genius that, 
Avhen kept in restraint, and its field confined to 
sentiment or sarcasm, Avas in unison Avith the 
temper of the day : in the second place, it Avas 
only through Gustave that Lebeau could ha\’e got 
at Savarin ; and the names Avhich that brilliant 
writer had secured at the outset Avould haAX suf- 
ficed to draAV attention to the earliest numbers of 
the Sens Commun, despite a title Avhich did not 
seem alluring. But these names alone could 
not have sufficed to circulate the neAv journal to 
the extent it had already leached. This Avas 
due to the curiosity excited by leading articles 
of a style neAv to the Parisian public, and of 
which the authorship defied conjecture. They 
were signed Pierre Firmin — supposed to be a nom 
de plume, as that name Avas utterly unknoAvn in 
the Avorld of letters. They aftected the tone of 
an impartial observer; they neither espoused 
nor attacked any particular party; they laid 
doAvn no abstract doctrines of government. But 
somehoAV or other, in language terse yet famil- 
iar, sometimes careless yet never vulgar, they 
expressed a prevailing sentiment of uneasy dis- 
content, a foreboding of some destined change 
in things established, without defining the nature 
of such change, AA’ithout saying Avhether it Avould 
be for good or for evil. In his criticisms upon 
individuals the Avriter was guarded and moderate 
— the keenest-eyed censor of the press could not 
have found a pretext for interference Avith ex- 
pressions of opinions so polite. Of the Emperor 
these articles spoke little, but that little Avas not 
disrespectful; yet, day after day, the articles con- 
tributed to sap the empire. All malcontents of 
every shade comprehended, as by a secret of 
freemasonry, that in this journal they had an 
ally. Against religion not a Avord Avas uttered, 
yet the enemies of religion bought that journal ; 
still, the friends of religion bought it too, for 
those articles treated Avith irony the philosophers 
on paper Avho thought that their contradictory 
crotchets could fuse themselves into any single 
Utopia, or that any social edifice, hurriedly run 
up by the crazy few, could become a permanent 
habitation for the turbulent many, Avithout the 
clamps of a creed. 

The tone of these articles alAA'ays correspond- 
ed Avith the title of the journal — Common-sense. 
It Avas to common-sense that it appealed — ap- 
pealed in the utterance of a man Avho disdained 
the subtle theories, the A'ehement declamation, 
the credulous beliefs, or the inflated bombast 
which constitute so large a portion of the Paris- 
ian press. The articles rather resembled certain 
organs of the English press, Avhich profess to be 
blinded by no enthusiasm for any body or any 
thing, which find their sale in that sympathy 
with ill nature to which Huet ascribes the popu- 
larity of Tacitus, and, always quietly undermin- 
ing institutions Avith a covert sneer, neA'er pretend 
to a spirit of imagination so at variance Avith com- 
mon-sense as a conjecture hoAv the institutions 
should be rebuilt or replaced. 


THE PARISIANS. 


Well, somehow or other the journal, as I was 
• saying, hit tlie taste of the Parisian public. It 
intimated, with the easy grace of an unpremedi- 
tated agreeable talker, that French society in all 
its classes was rotten, and each class was 'willing 
to believe that all the others were rotten, and 
agreed that unless the others were reformed, 
there was something very unsound in itself. 

The ball at the Duchesse de Tarascon’s was a 
btilliant event. The summer was far advanced ; 
many of the Parisian holiday-makers had return- 
ed to the capital, but the season had not com- 
menced, and a ball at that time of year was a 
very unwonted event. But there was a special oc- 
casion for this fete — a marriage between a niece 
of the Duchesse and the son of a great oiBcial in 
high favor at the Imperial Court. 

The dinner at Louvier’s broke up early, and the 
music for the second waltz was sounding when 
Enguerrand, Alain, and the Vicomte de Mau- 
leon ascended the stairs. Raoul did not accom- 
pany them ; he went very rarely to any balls — 
never to one given by an Imperialist, however 
nearly related to him the Imperialist might be. 
But, in the sweet indulgence of his good nature, 
he had no blame for those who did go — not for 
Enguerrand, still less, of course, for Alain. 

Something, too, might well here be said as to 
his feelings toward Victor de Mauleon. He had 
joined in the family acquittal of that kinsman as 
to the grave charge of the jewels ; the proofs of 
innocence thereon seemed to him unequivocal and 
decisive, therefore he had called on the Vicomte 
and acquiesced in all formal civilities shown to 
him. But, such acts of justice to a fellow-^en- 
tilhomme and a kinsman duly performed, he de- 
sired to see as little as possible of the Vicomte 
de Mauleon. He reasoned thus : “Of every 
charge which society made against this man he 
is guiltless. But of all the claims to admiration 
which society accorded to him, before it errone- 
ously condemned, there are none which make me 
covet his friendship, or suffice to dispel doubts as 
to what he may be when society once more re- 
ceives him. And the man is so captivating that 
I should dread his influence over myself did I see 
much of him.” 

Raoul kept his reasonings to himself, for he 
had that sort of charity which indisposes an ami- 
able man to be severe on by-gone offenses. In 
tlie eyes of Enguerrand and Alain, and such 
young votaries of the mode as they could in- 
fluence, Victor de Mauleon assumed almost he- 
roic proportions. In the affair which had in- 
flicted on him a calumny so odious it was clear 
that he had acted with chivalrous delicacy of 
honor. And the turbulence and recklessness of 
his earlier years, redeemed as they were, in the 
traditions of his contemporaries, by courage and 
generosity, were not offenses to which young 
Frenchmen are inclined to be harsh. All ques- 
tion as to the mode in which his life might hare 
been passed during his long absence from the 
capital was merged in the respect due to the 
only facts known, and these were clearly proved 
in his pieces justificatives. First, That he had 
served under another name in the ranks of the 
army in Algiers ; had distinguished himself 
there for signal valor, and received, with pro- 
motion, the decoration of the cross. His real 
name was known only to his colonel, and on 
quitting the service the colonel placed in his 


111 

hands a letter of warm eulogy on his conduct, 
and identifying him as Victor de Mauleon. Sec- 
ondly, That in California he had saved a wealthy 
family from midnight murder, fighting single- 
handed against and overmastering three ruf- 
fians, and declining all other reward from those 
he had preserved than a written attestation of 
their ^ gratitude. In all countries valor ranks 
high in the list of virtues ; in no country does it 
so absolve from vices as it does in France. 

But as yet Victor de Mauleon’s vindication 
was only known by a few, and those belonging 
to the gayer circles of life. How he might be 
judged by the sober middle class, which consti- 
tutes the most important section of public opin- 
ion to a candidate for political trusts and distinc- 
tions, w’as another question. 

The Duchesse stood at the door to receive 
her visitors. Duplessis was seated near the en- 
trance, by the side of a distinguished member 
of the Imperial Government, with whom he was 
carrying on a whispered conversation. The 
eye of the financier, however, turned toward the 
doorway as Alain and Enguerrand entered, and, 
passing over their familiar faces, fixed itself at- 
tentively on that of a much older man -whom 
Enguerrand w'as presenting to the Duchesse, 
and in whom Duplessis rightly divined the Vi- 
comte de Mauleon. Certainly if no one could 
have recognized M. Lebeau in the stately per- 
sonage who had visited Louvier, still less could 
one who had lieard of the wild feats of the roi 
des viveurs in his youth reconcile belief in such 
tales with the quiet modesty of mien which dis- 
tinguished the cavalier now replying, with bend- 
ed head and subdued accents, to the courteous 
welcome of the brilliant hostess. But for such 
difference in attributes between the past and the 
present De Mauleon, Duplessis had been pre- 
pared by the convei'sation at the Maison Doree. 
And now, as the Vicomte, yielding his place by 
the Duchesse to some new-comer, glided on, and', 
leaning against a column, contemplated the gay 
scene before him with that expression of counte- 
nance, half sarcastic, half mournful, with which 
men regard, after long estrangement, the scenes 
of departed joys, Duplessis felt that no change 
in that man had impaired the force of charac- 
ter which had made him the hero of reckless 
coevals. Though wearing no beard, not even 
a mustache, there was something emphatically 
masculine in the contour of the close-shaven 
cheek and resolute jaw, in a forehead broad at 
the temples, and protuberant in those organs 
over the eyebrows which are said to be sig- 
nificant of quick perception and ready action ; 
in the lips, when in repose compressed, perhaps 
somewhat stem in their expression, but pliant 
and mobile wlien speaking, and wonderfully fas- 
cinating when they smiled. Altogether, about 
this Victor de Mauleon there was a nameless 
distinction, apart from that of conventional ele- 
gance. You would have said, “That is a man 
of some marked individuality, an eminence of 
some kind in himself.” You would not be sur- 
prised to hear that he was a party leader, a skill- 
ed diplomatist, a daring soldier, an adventurous 
traveler, but you would not guess him to be a 
student, an author, an artist. 

While Duplessis thus observed the Vicomte de 
Mauleon, all the while seeming to lend an atten- 
tive ear to the whispered voice of the minister 


112 


THE PARISIANS. 


by his side, Ahiin passed on into the ball-room. 
He ^Yas fresh enough to feel the exhilaration of 
the dance. Enguerrand (who had sundved that 
excitement, and who habitually deserted any as- 
sembly at an early hour for the cigar and whist 
of his club) had made his way to De Mauleon, 
and there stationed himself. The lion of one 
generation has always a mixed feeling of curios- 
ity and respect for the lion of a generation before 
him, and the young Vandemar had conceived a 
strong and almost an affectionate interest in this 
discrowned king of that realm in fashion which, 
once lost, is never to be regained ; for it is only 
Youth that can hold its sceptre and command 
its subjects. 

“In this crowd, Vicomte,” said Enguerrand, 
“ there must be many old acquaintances of 
yours ?” 

“Perhaps so; but as yet I have only seen 
new faces.” 

As he thus spoke, a middle-aged man, deco- 
rated with the grand cross of the Legion and 
half a dozen foreign orders, lending his arm to 
a lady of the same age radiant in diamonds, 
passed by toward the ball-room, and in some 
sudden swerve' of his person, occasioned by a 
pause of his companion to adjust her train, he 
accidentally brushed against De Mauleon, whom 
he had not before noticed. Turning round to 
apologize for his awkwardness, he encountered 
the full gaze of the Vicomte, started, changed 
countenance, and hurried on his companion. 

“Do you not recognize his Excellency ?” said 
Enguerrand, smiling. “His can not be a new 
face to you.” 

“ Is it the Baron de Lacy ?” asked De Mauleon. 

“The Baron de Lacy, now Count d’Epinay, 

embassador at the Court of , and, if report 

speak true, likely soon to exchange that post for 
the portefeuille of minister.” 

“ He has got on in life since I saw him last, 
the little Baron. He was then my devoted imi- 
tator, and I was not proud of the imitation.” 

“ He has got on by always clinging to the 
skirts of some one stronger than himself — to 
yours, I dare say, when, being a, parvenu despite 
his usurped title of Baron, he aspired to the en- 
tree into clubs and salons. The entree thus ob- 
tained, the rest followed easily : he became a ynil- 
lionnaire through a wife’s dot, and an embassa- 
dor through the wife’s lovei', who is a power in 
the state.” 

“ But he must have substance in himself. 
Empty bags can not be made to stand upright. 
Ah ! unless t mistake, I see some one I knew 
better. Yon pale thin man, also with the grand 
cross — surely that is Alfred Hennequin. . Is he, 
too, a decorated Imperialist ? I left him a so- 
cialistic Republican. ” 

“ But, I presume, even then an eloquent avo- 
cat. He got into the Chamber, spoke well, de- 
fended the coup d'etat. He has just been made 

Prefet of the great department of the , a 

popular appointment. He bears a high charac- 
ter. Pray renew your acquaintance Avith him ; 
he is coming this way. ” 

“Will so grave a dignitary renew acquaint- 
ance with me? I doubt it.” 

But as De Mauleon said this he moved from 
the column and advanced toward the Prefet. 
Enguerrand followed him, and saAv the Vicomte 
extend his hand to his old acquaintance. The 


Prefet stared, and said, with frigid courtesy, 
“Pardon me — some mistake.” 

“Allow me, M. Hennequin,” said Enguer- 
rand, interposing, and wishing good-naturedly 
to save De Mauleon the awkwardness of intro- 
ducing himself— “ allow me to reintroduce you 
to my kinsman, whom the lapse of years may 
well excuse you for forgetting, the Vicomte de 
Mauleon.” 

Still the Prefet did not accept the hand. He 
bowed with formal ceremoin", said, “ I Avas not 
aAvare that M. le Vicomte had returned to Par- 
is,” and, moving to the doorAA’ay, made his saluta- 
tion to the hostess and disappeared. 

“ The insolent!” muttered Enguerrand. 

“ Hush !” said De Mauleon, quietly ; “I can 
fight no more duels — especially Avith a Prefet. 
But I OAvn I am Aveak enough to feel hurt at 
such a reception from Hennequin, for he OAved 
me some obligations — small, perhaps, but still 
they Avere such as might have made me select 
him, rather than Louvier, as the vindicator of 
my name, had I knoAvn him to be so high 
placed. But a man who has raised himself 
into an authority may Avell be excused for for- 
getting a friend Avhose character needs defense. 
I forgiA'e him.” 

There Avas something pathetic in the Vicomte’s 
tone Avhich touched Enguerrand’s AA'arm if light 
heart. But De Mauleon did not allow him time 
to answer. He Avent on quickly through an 
opening in the gay croAvd, Avhich immediately 
closed behind him, and Enguerrand saw him no 
more that evening. 

Duplessis ere this had quitted his seat by the 
minister, draAvn thence by a young and very 
pretty girl resigned to his charge by a cavalier 
Avith Avhom she had been dancing. She Avas tlm 
only daughter of Duplessis, and he valued her 
eA'en more than the millions he had made at the 
Bourse. “The Princess,” she said, “ has been 
sAvept off in the train of some German Royalty ; 
so, petit pere, I must impose mj'self on thee.” 

The Princess, a Russian of high rank, aa'us 
the chaperon that eAcning of Mademoiselle Va- 
lerie Duplessis. 

“And I suppose I must take thee back into 
the ball-room, ’’said the financier, smiling proud- 
ly, “ and find thee partners.” 

“I don’t AA'ant your aid for that, monsieur; 
except this quadrille, my list is pretty Avell filled 
up.” 

“And I hope the partners Avill be pleasant. 
Let me knoAv Avho they are,” he Avhispered, as 
they threaded their Avay into the ball-room. 

The girl glanced at her tablet, 

“Well, the first on the list is milord some- 
body, Avith an unpronounceable English name.” 

“Beau caA’alier?” 

“No ; ugly, old too — thirty at least.” 

Duplessis felt relieved. He did not wish his 
daughter to fall in love Avith an Englishman. 

“ And the next?” 

“ The next,” she said, hesitatingly, and he ob- 
served that a soft blush accompanied the hesita- 
tion. 

“ Yes, the next. Not English too ?” 

“ Oh no ; the Marquis de Rochebriant.” 

“ Ah ! Avho presented him to thee ?” 

“Thy friend, petit pere, M. de Breze.’’ 

Duplessis again glanced at his daughter’s face; 
it Avas bent over her bouquet. 


THE PARISIANS. 


113 


“ Is he ugly also?” 

“Ugly?” exclaimed the girl, indignantly; 
‘ ‘ why, he is — ” She checked herself and turned 
away her head. 

Diiplessis became thoughtful. He was glad 
that he had accompanied his child into the ball- 
room ; he would stay there and keep watch on 
her, and Rochebriant also. 

Up to that moment he had felt a dislike to 
Rochebriant. That young noble’s too obvious 
pride of race had nettled him, not the less that 
the financier himself was vain of his ancestry. 
Perhaps he still disliked Alain, but the dislike 
was now accompanied with a certain, not hostile, 
interest ; and if he became connected with the 
race, the pride in it might grow contagious. 

They had not been long in the ball-room be- 
fore Alain came up to claim his promised part- 
ner. In saluting Duplessis, his manner was the 
same as usual — not more cordial, not less cere- 
moniously distant. A man so able as the finan- 
cier can not be without quick knowledge of the 
human heart. 

“If disposed to fall in love with Valerie,” 
thought Duplessis, “ he would have taken more 
pains to please her father. Well, thank Heaven, 
there are better matches to be found for her than 
a noble without fortune, and a Legitimist with- 
out career.” 

In fact, Alain felt no more for Valerie than 
for any other pretty girl in the room. In talk- 
ing with the Vicomte de Breze in the intervals 
of the dance, he had made some passing remark 
on her beauty; De Breze had said, “ Yes, she is 
charming ; I will present you ;” and hastened to 
do so before Rochebriant even learned her name. 
So introduced, he could but invite her to give 
him her first disengaged dance ; and when that 
w'as fixed, he had retired, without entering into 
conversation. 

Now, as they took their places in the quadrille, 
he felt that eftbrt of speech had become a duty, 
if not a pleasure, and, of course, he began with 
the first commonplace which presented itself to 
his mind. 

“Do you not think it a very pleasant ball, 
mademoiselle ?” 

“Yes,” dropped, in almost inaudible reply, 
from Valerie’s rosy lips. 

“And not overcrowded, as most balls are.” 

Valerie’s lips again moved, but this time quite 
inaudibly. 

The obligations of the figure now caused a 
pause. Alain racked his brains, and began 
again : 

“They tell me that the last season was more 
than usually gay ; of that I can not judge, for it 
was well-nigh over when I came to Paris for the 
first time.” 

Valerie looked up with a more animated ex- 
pression than her child-like face had yet shown, 
and said, this time distinctly, “This is my first 
ball. Monsieur le Marquis.” 

“ One has only to look at mademoiselle to di- 
vine that fimt,” replied Alain, gallantly. 

Again the conversation was interrupted by 
the dance, but the ice between the two was now 
broken. And when the quadrille was concluded, 
and Rochebriant led the fair Valerie back to her 
father’s side, she felt as if she had been listen- 
ing to the music of tlie spheres, and that the 
music had now suddenly stopped. Alain, alas 


for her ! was under no such pleasing illusion. 
Her talk had seemed to him artless indeed, but 
vei’y insipid, compared with the brilliant conver- 
sation of the wedded Parisiennes with whom he 
more habitually danced ; and it was with rather 
a sensation of relief that he made his parting 
bow, and receded into the crowd of by-standers. 

Meanwhile De Mauleon had quitted the as- 
semblage, walking slowly through the deserted 
streets toward his apartment. The civilities he 
had met at Louvier’s dinner-party, and the 
marked distinction paid to him by kinsmen of 
rank and position so unequivocal as Alain and 
Enguerrand, had softened his mood and cheered 
his spirits. He had begun to question hirhself 
whether a fair opening to his political ambition 
was really forbidden to him under the existent 
order of things, whether it necessitated the em- 
ployment of such dangerous tools as those to 
which anger and despair had reconciled his in- 
tellect. But the pointed way in which he had 
been shunned or slighted by the two men who 
belonged to political life — to men who in youth 
had looked up to himself, and whose dazzling 
career of honors was identified with the impe- 
rial system — reanimated his fiercer passions and 
his more perilous designs. The frigid accost of 
Hennequin more especially galled him ; it wound- 
ed not only his pride, but his heart ; it had the 
venom of ingratitude, and it is the peculiar priv- 
ilege of ingratitude to wound hearts that have 
learned to harden themselves to the hate or con- 
tempt of men to whom no services have been ren- 
dered. In some private affair concerning his 
property De Mauleon had had occasion to con- 
sult Hennequin, then a rising young avocat. 
Out of that consultation a friendship had sprung 
up, despite the differing habits and social grades 
of the two men. One day, calling on Hennequin, 
he found him in a state of great nervous excite- 
ment. The avocat had received a public insult 
in the salon of a noble, to whom De Mauleon 
had introduced him, from a man who pretended 
to the hand of a young lady to whom Hennequin 
was attached, and, indeed, almost affianced. The 
man was a notorious spadassin — a duelist little 
less renowned for skill in all weapons than De 
Mauleon himself. The affair had been such 
that Hennequin’s friends assured him he had no 
choice but to challenge this bravo. Hennequin, 
brave enough at the bar, was no hero before 
sword-point or pistol. He was utterly ignorant 
of the use of either weapon ; his death in the 
encounter with an antagonist so formidable seem- 
ed to him certain, and life was so precious ; an 
honorable and distinguished career opening be- 
fore him, maiTiage with the woman he loved : 
still he had the Frenchman’s point of honor. 
He had been told that he must fight ; well, then, 
he must. He asked De Mauleon to be one of 
his seconds, and in asking him, sank in his chair, 
covered his face with his hands, and burst into 
tears. 

“Wait till to-morrow,” said De Mauleon; 
“ take no step till then. Meanwhile you are in 
my hands, and I answer for your honor.” 

On leaving Hennequin, Victor sought the s/>a- 
dassin at the club of which they were both mem- 
bers, and contrived, without reference to Hen- 
nequin, to pick a quaiTel with him. A challenge 
ensued ; a duel witli swords took place the next 
morning. De Mauleon disarmed and wounded 


lit 


THE PAKISIANS. 


his antagonist, not gravely, but sufficiently to 
terminate the encounter. He assisted to convey 
the wounded man to his apartment, and planted 
himself by his bedside, as if he were a friend. 

“ Why on earth did you fasten a quarrel on 
me?” asked the spadassin; “and why, having 
done so, did you spare my life? — for your sword 
was at my heart when you shifted its point, and 
pierced my shoulder.” 

“I will tell you, and in so doing beg you to 
accept my friendship hereafter, on one condition. 
In the course of the day write or dictate a few 
civil words of apology to M. Hennequin. Ma 
fox ! every one will praise you for a generosity 
so becoming in a man who has given such proofs 
of courage and skill to an avocat who has never 
handled a sword nor fired a pistol.” 

That same day De Mauleon remitted to Hen- 
nequin an apology for heated words freely re- 
tracted, which satisfied all his friends. For the 
service thus rendered by De Mauldon Henne- 
quin declared himself everlastingly indebted. In 
fact, he entirely owed to that friend his life, his 
marriage, his honor, his career. 

“And now,” thought De Mauleon — “now, 
when he could so easily requite me — now he will 
not even take my hand. Is human nature itself 
at war with me ?” 


CHAPTER III. 

Nothing could be simpler than the apartment 
of the Vicomte de Mauleon, in the second story 
of a quiet old-fashioned street. It had been fur- 
nished at small cost out of his savings. Yet, on 
the whole, it evinced the good taste of a man 
who had once been among the exquisites of the 
polite world. 

You felt that you were in the apartment of a 
gentleman, and a gentleman of somewhat severe 
tastes, and of sober matured years. He was sit- 
ting the next morning in the room which he used as 
a private study. Along the walls were arranged 
dwarf book-cases, as yet occupied by few books, 
most of them books of reference, pthers cheap 
editions of the French classics in prose — no po- 
ets, no romance-writers — with a few Latin au- 
thors also in prose — Cicero, Sallust, Tacitus. 
He was engaged at his desk writing — a book 
with its leaves open before him, Paid Louis 
Courier^ that model of political irony and mas- 
culine style of composition. There was a ring 
at his door-bell. The Vicomte kept no servant. 
He rose and answered the summons. He re- 
coiled a few paces on recognizing his visitor in 
M. Hennequin. 

The Prefet this time did not withdraw his 
hand ; he extended it, but it was with a certain 
awkwardness and timidity. 

“I thought it my duty to call on you, Vi- 
comte, thus early, having already seen M. En- 
guerrand de Vandemar. He has shown me the 
copies of the pieces which were inspected by your 
distinguished kinsmen, and which completely 
clear you of the charge that, grant me your par- 
don when I say, seemed to me still to remain 
unanswered when I had the honor to meet you 
last night.” 

‘ ‘ It appeal's to me, M. Hennequin, that you, 
as an avocat so eminent, might have convinced 
yourself very readily of that fact. ” 


“M. le Vicomte, I was in Switzerland with 
my wife at the time of the unfortunate affair in 
which you were involved. ” 

“But when you returned to Paris you might 
perhaps have deigned to make inquiries so af- 
fecting the honor of one you had called a friend, 
and for whom you had professed” — De Mauleon 
paused ; he disdained to add — “ an eternal grati- 
tude.” 

Hennequin colored slightly, but replied with 
self-possession : 

“I certainly did inquire. I did hear that 
the charge against you with regard to the ab- 
straction of the jewels was withdrawn — that you 
were therefore acquitted by law ; but I heard also 
that society did not acquit you, and that, finding 
this, you had quitted France. Pardon me again, 
no one would listen to me when I attempted to 
speak on your behalf. But now that so many 
years have elapsed, that the story is imperfectly 
remembered — that relations so high placed re- 
ceive you so cordially — now I rejoice to think that 
you will have no difficulty in regaining a social 
position never really lost, but for a time resigned.” 

“ I am duly sensible of the friendly joy you 
express. I was reading the other day in a lively 
author some pleasant remarks on the effeets of 
medisance or calumny upon our impressionable 
Parisian public, ‘ If, ’ says the writer, * I found 
myself accused of having put the two towers of 
Notre Dame into my waistcoat pocket, I should 
not dream of defending myself ; I should take 
to flight. And,’ adds the writer, ‘if my best 
friend were under the same accusation, I should 
be so afraid of being considered his accomplice 
that I should put my best friend outside the 
door.’ Perhaps, M. Hennequin, I was seized 
with the first alarm. Why should I blame you 
if seized with the second? Happily, this good 
city of Paris has its reactions. And you can 
now offer me your hand. Paris has by this 
time discovered that the two towers of Notre 
Dame are not in my pocket.” 

There was a pause. De Mauleon had reset- 
tled himself at his desk, bending over his papers, 
and his manner seemed to imply that he consid- 
ered the conversation at an end. 

But a pang of ^ame, of remorse, of tender 
remembrance, shot across the heart of the dec- 
orous, worldly, self-seeking man, who owed all 
that he now was to the ci-devant vaunen before 
him. Again he stretched forth his hand, and this 
time grasped De Mauleon’s warmly. ‘ ‘ Forgive 
me,” he said, feelingly and hoarsely; “forgive 
me. I was to blame. By character, and per- 
haps by the necessities of my career, I am over- 
timid to public opinion, public scandal — forgive 
me. Say if in any thing now I can requite, 
though but slightly, the service I owe you.” 

De Mauleon looked steadily at the Prifet, and 
said, slowly, “Would you serve me in turn? 
Are you sincere ?” 

The Prefet hesitated a moment, then answer- 
ed, firmly, “ Yes.” 

“Well, then, what I ask of you is a frank 
opinion — not as a lawyer, not as Prefet, but as 
a man who knows the present state of French 
society. Give that opinion without respect to 
my feelings one way or other. Let it emanate 
solely from your practiced judgment.” 

“ Be it so,” said Hennequin, wondering what 
was to come. 


THE PAllISIANS. 


De Mauleon resumed : 

“As you may remember, during my former 
career I had no political ambition. I did not 
meddle with politics. In the troubled times that 
immediately succeeded the fall of Louis Philippe 
I was but an epicurean looker-on. Grant that, 
so far as admission to the salons are concerned, I 
shall encounter no difficulty in regaining position. 
But as regards the Chamber, public life, a po- 
litical career — can I have my fair opening under 
the empire ? You pause. Answer as you have 
promised, frankly.” 

“ The difficulties in the way of a political ca- 
reer would be very great.” 

“Insuperable ?” 

“I fear so. Of course, in my capacity of 
Pre/et, I have no small influence in my depart- 
ment in support of a government candidate. 
But I do not think that the Imperial Govern- 
ment could, at this time especially, in which it 
must be very cautious in selecting its candidates, 
be induced to recommend you. The affair of 
the jewels would be raked up — your vindication 
disputed, denied — the fact that for so many 
years you have acquiesced in that charge with- 
out taking steps to refute it — your antecedents, 
even apart from that charge — your present want 
of property (M. Enguerrand tells me your in- 
come is but moderate) — the absence of all pre- 
vious repute in public life. No ; relinquish the 
idea of political contest — it would expose you to 
inevitable mortifications, to a failure that would 
even jeopardize the admission to the sa/ows which 
you are now gaining. You could not be a gov- 
ernment candidate.” 

‘ ‘ Granted. I have no desire to be one ; but an 
opposition candidate, one of the Liberal party ?” 

“As an Imperialist,” said Hennequin, smiling 
gravely, “and holding the office I do, it would 
not become me to encourage a candidate against 
the Emperor’s government. But speaking with 
the frankness you solicit, I should say that your 
chances there are infinitely worse. The oppo- 
sition are in a pitiful minority — the most emi- 
nent of the Liberals can scarcely gain seats for 
themselves ; great local popularity or property, 
high established repute for established patriot- 
ism, or proved talents of oratory and statesman- 
ship, are essential qualifications for a seat in 
the opposition, and even these do not suffice for 
a third of the persons who possess them. Be 
again what you were before, the hero of salons 
remote from the turbulent vulgarity of politics. ” 

“ I am answered. Thank you once more. 
The service I rendered you once is requited 
now. ” 

“ No, indeed — no ; but will you dine with me 
quietly to-day, and allow me to present to you 
my wife and two children, born since we part- 
ed? I say to-day, for to-morrow I return to 
my Prefecture.'^ 

“I am infinitely obliged by your invitation, 
but to-day I dine with the Count de Beauvilliers 
to meet some of the Corps Diplomatique. I 
must make good my place in the salons, since 
you so clearly show me that I have no chance 
of one in the Legislature — unless — ” 

“ Unless what ?” 

“Unless there happen one of those revolu- 
tions in which the scum comes uppermost.” 

“ No fear of that. The subterranean bar- 
racks and railway have ended forever the rise 


115 

of the scum — the reign of the canaille and its 
barricades.” 

“ Adieu, my dear Hennequin. My respectful 
hommages a madame." 

After that day the writings of Pierre Eirmin 
in Le Sens Commun, though still keeping within 
the pale of the law, became more decidedly hos- 
tile to the imperial system, still without com- 
mitting their author to any definite programme 
of the sort of government that should succeed it. 


CHAPTER IV. ■ 

The weeks glided on. Isaura’s MS. had 
passed into print ; it came out in the Prench 
fashion of feuilletons — a small detachment at a 
time. A previous flourish of trumpets by Sa- 
varin and the clique at his command insured 
it attention, if not from the general public, at 
least from critical and literary coteries. Be- 
fore the fourth installment appeared it had out- 
grown the patronage of the coteries; it seized 
hold of the public. It was not in the last school 
in fashion ; incidents were not crowded and 
violent — they were few and simple, rather ap- 
pertaining to an elder school, in which poetry 
of sentiment and grace of diction prevailed. 
That veiy resemblance to old favorites gave it 
the attraction of novelty. In a word, it excited 
a pleased admiration, and great curiosity was 
felt as to the authorship. When it oozed out 
that it was by the young lady whose future suc- 
cess in the musical world had been so sanguinely 
predicted by all who had heard her sing, the in- 
terest wonderfully increased. Petitions to be 
introduced to her acquaintance were showered 
upon Savarin : before she scarcely realized her 
dawning fame she was drawn from her quiet 
home and retired habits ; she was fetee and 
courted in the literary circle of which Savarin 
was a chief. That circle touched, on one side, 
Bohemia ; on the other, that realm of politer 
fashion which, in eveiy intellectual metropolis, 
but especially in Paris, seeks to gain borrowed 
light from luminaries in art and letters. But 
the very admiration she obtained somewhat de- 
pressed, somewhat troubled her ; after all, it did 
not differ from that which was at her command 
as a singer. 

On the one hand, she shrank instinctively from 
the caresses of female authors and the familiar 
greetings of male authors, who frankly lived in 
philosophical disdain of the conventions respect- 
ed by sober, decorous mortals. On the other 
hand, in the civilities of those who, while they 
courted a rising celebrity, still held their habitu- 
al existence apart from the artistic world, there 
was a certain air of condescension, of patronage 
toward the young stranger with no other pro- 
tector but Signora Venosta, the ci-devant public 
singer, and who had made her debut in a jour- 
nal edited by M. Gustave Rameau, which, how- 
ever disguised by exaggerated terms of praise, 
wounded her pride of woman in flattering her 
vanity as author. Among this latter set were 
wealthy, high-born men, who addressed her as 
woman — as woman beautiful and young — with 
words of gallantry that implied love, but certain- 
ly no thought of marriage : many of the most 
ardent were, indeed, married already. But once 


IIG 


THE PARISIANS. 


launched into the thick of Parisian hospitalities, 
it was difficult to draw back. The Venosta wept 
at the thought of missing some lively soiree, and 
Savarin laughed at her shrinking fastidiousness 
as that of a child’s ignorance of the w’orld. But 
still she had her mornings to herself ; and in 
those mornings, devoted to the continuance of 
her work (for the commencement was in print 
before a third was completed), she forgot the 
commonplace world that received her in the 
evenings. Insensibly to herself the tone of this 
work had changed as it proceeded. It had be- 
gun seriously, indeed, but in the seriousness there 
was a certain latent joy. It might be the joy 
of having found vent of utterance ; it might be 
rather a joy still more latent, inspired by the re- 
membrance of Graham’s words and looks, and 
by the thought that she had renounced all idea 
of the professional career which he had evident- 
ly disapproved. Life then seemed to her a bright 
possession. We have seen that she had begun 
her roman without planning how it should end. 
She had, however, then meant it to end, some- 
liow or other, happily. Now the lustre had gone 
from life — the tone of the work was saddened — 
it foreboded a tragic close. But for the general 
reader it became, with every chapter, still more 
interesting ; the poor child had a singularly mu- 
sical gift of style — a music which lent itself natu- 
rally to pathos. Every very young writer knows 
how his work, if one of feeling, will color itself 
from the views of some truth in his innermost 
self ; and in proportion as it does so, how his ab- 
sorption in the work increases, till it becomes 
part and parcel of his own mind and heart. The 
presence of a hidden sorrow may change the fate 
of the beings he has created, and guide to the 
grave those whom, in a happier vein, he would 
have united at the altar. It is not till a later 
stage of experience and art that the writer es- 
capes from the influences of his individual per- 
sonality, and lives in existences that take no col- 
orings from his own. Genius usually must pass 
through the subjective process before it gains the 
objectho. Even a Shakspeare represents him- 
self in the Sonnets before no trace of himself is 
visible in a FalstafF or a Lear. 

No news of the Englishman — not a word. 
Isaura could not but feel that in his words, his 
looks, that day in her own garden, and those 
yet happier days at Enghien, there had been 
more than friendship : there had been love — love 
enough to justify her own pride in whispering to 
herself, “And I love too.” But then that last 
parting ! — how changed he was — how cold ! She 
conjectured that jealousy of Rameau might, in 
some degree, account for the coldness when he 
first entered the room, but surely not when he 
left; surely not when she had overpassed the 
reserve of her sex, and implied by signs rarely 
misconstrued b}" those who love that he had no 
cause for jealousy of another. Yet he had gone 
—parted with her pointedly as a friend, a mere 
friend. How foolish she had been to think this 
rich, ambitious foreigner could ever have meant 
to be more ! In the occupation of her work she 
thought to banish his image; but in that work 
the image was never absent ; there were passages 
in which she pleadingly addressed it, and then 
would cease abruptly, stifled by passionate tears. 
Still she fancied that the work would reunite 
them ; that in its pages he would hear her voice 


and comprehend her heart. And thus all praise 
of the work became very, very dear to her. 

At last, after many weeks, Savarin heard from 
Graham. The letter was dated Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle, at which the Englishman said he might yet 
be some time detained. In the letter Graham 
spoke chiefly of the new journal : in polite com- 
pliment of Savarin’s own effusions ; in mixed 
praise and condemnation of the political and so- 
cial articles signed Pierre Firmin — praise of their 
intellectual power, condemnation of their mor- 
al cynicism. “ The writer,” he said, “ reminds 
me of a passage in which Montesquieu compares 
the heathen philosophers to those plants which 
the earth produces in places that have never 
seen the heavens. The soil of his experience 
does not grow a single belief ; and as no com- 
munity can exist without a belief of some kind, 
so a politician without belief can but help to de- 
stroy ; he can not reconstruct. Such writers cor- 
rupt a society ; they do not reform a system. ” 
He closed his letter with a reference to Isaura : 
“ Do, in your reply, my dear Savarin, tell me 
something about your friends Signora Venosta 
and the signorina, whose work, so far as yet 
published, I liave read with admiring astonish- 
ment at the power of a female writer so young to 
rival the veteran practitioners of fiction in the 
creation of interest in imaginaiy characters, and 
in sentiments which, if they appear somewhat 
overromantic and exaggerated, still touch very 
fine chords in human nature not awakened in our 
trite every-day existence. I presume that the 
beauty of the roman has been duly appreciated 
by a public so refined as the Parisian, and that 
the name of the author is generally known. No 
doubt she is now much the rage of the literary 
circles, and her career as a writer may be con- 
sidered fixed. Pray present my congratulations 
to the signorina when you see her.” 

Savarin had been in receipt of this letter some 
days before he called on Isaura, and carelessly 
showed it to her. She took it to the window to 
read, in order to conceal the trembling of her 
hands. In a few minutes she returned it silently. 

“Those Englishmen,” said Savarin, “have 
not the art of compliment. I am by no means 
flattered by what he says of my trifles, and I 
dare say you are still less pleased with this chilly 
praise of your charming tale ; but the man means 
to be civil.” 

“ Certainly,” said Isaura, smiling faintly. 

“ Only think of Rameau,” resumed Savarin ; 

‘ ‘ on the strength of his salary in the Sens Com- 
mun, and on the chateaux en Espagne which he 
constructs thereon — he has already furnished an 
apartment in the Chaussee d’Antin, and talks 
of setting up a coup^ in order to maintain the 
dignity of letters when he goes to dine wdth the 
duchesses who are some day or other to invite 
him. Yet I admire his self-confidence, though 
I laugh at it. A man gets on by a spring in 
his owm mechanism, and he should always keep 
it wound up. Rameau will makb a figure. I 
used to pity him. I begin to respect ; nothing 
succeeds like success. But I see I am spoiling 
your morning. Au revoir, mon enfant." 

Left alone, Isaura brooded in a sort of mourn- 
ful wonderment over the words referring to her- 
self in Graham's letter. Read though but once, 
she knew them by heart. What! did he con- 
sider those characters she had represented as 


THE PARISIANS. 


wholly imaginary? In one— the most promi- 
nent, the most attractive — could he detect no 
likeness to himself ? What ! did he consider 
so “overromantic and exaggerated,” sentiments 
which couched appeals from her heart to his ? 
Alas ! in matters of sentiment it is the misfortune 
of us men that even the most refined of us often 
grate upon some sentiment in a woman, though 
she may not be romantic— not romantic at all, 
us people go — some sentiment which she thought 
must be so obvious, if we cared a straw about 
her, and which, though we prize her above the 
Indies, is, by our dim, horn-eyed, masculine vis- 
ion, undiscernible. It may be something in it- 
self the airiest of trifles : the anniversary of a day 
in which the first kiss was interchanged, nay, of 
a violet gathered, a misunderstanding cleared 
up ; and of that anniversary we remember no 
more than we do of our bells and coral. But 
she — she remembers it ; it is no bells and coral 
to her. Of course much is to be said in excuse 
of man, brute though he be. Consider the mul- 
tiplicity of his occupations, the practical nature 
of his cares. But granting the validity of all 
such excuse, there is in man an original obtuse- 
ness of fibre as regards sentiment in compari- 
son with the delicacy of woman’s. It comes, 
perhaps, from the same hardness of constitu- 
tion which forbids us the luxury of ready tears. 
Thus it is very difficult for the wisest man to 
understand thoroughly a woman. Goethe says 
somewhere that the highest genius in man must 
have much of the woman in it. If this be true, 
the highest genius alone in man can comprehend 
and explain the nature of woman ; because it is 
not remote from him, but an integral part of his 
masculine self. I am not sure, however, that 
it necessitates the highest genius, but rather a 
special idiosyncrasy in genius which the highest 
may or may not have. I think Sophocles a high- 
er genius than Euripides ; but Euripides has 
that idiosyncrasy, and Sophocles not. I doubt 
whether women would accept Goethe as their in- 
terpreter with the same readiness with w'hich they 
would accept Schiller. Shakspeare, no doubt, 
excels all poets in the comprehension of women, 
in his sympathy with them in the woman part 
of his nature which Goethe ascribes to the high- 
est genius; but, putting aside that “monster,” 
I do not remember any English poet whom we 
should consider conspicuously eminent in that 
lore, unless it be the prose poet, nowadays gen- 
erally underrated and little read, who w'rote the 
letters of Clarissa Harlowe. I say all this in 
vindication of Graham Vane, if, though a very 
clever man in his way, and by no means unin- 
structed in human nature, he had utterly failed 
in comprehending the mysteries which to this 
poor woman-child seemed to need no key for 
one who really loved her. But we have said 
somewhere before in this book that music speaks 
in a language which can not explain itself ex- 
cept in music. So speaks, in the human heart, 
much which is akin to music. Fiction (that is, 
poetry, whether in form of rhyme or prose) 
speaks thus pretty often. A reader must be 
more commonplace than, I trust, my gentle 
readers are, if he suppose that when Isaura sym- 
bolized the real hero of her thoughts in the fa- 
bled hero of her romance, she depicted him as 
one of whom the world could say, “That is Gra- 
ham Vane.” I doubt if even a male poet would 


117 

so vulgarize any woman whom he thoroughly 
reverenced and loved. She is too sacred to him 
to be thus unveiled to the public stare ; as the 
sweetest of all ancient love-poets says well — 

“ Qui sapit in tacito gaudeat ilia sinu." 

But a girl, a girl in her first untold timid love, 
to let the world know, “ that is the man I love 
and would die for !” — if such a girl be, she has 
no touch of the true woman-genius, and cer- 
tainly she and Isaura have nothing in common. 
Well, then, in Isaura^s invented hero, though 
she saw the archetypal form of Graham Vane 
— saw him as in her young, vague, romantic 
dreams, idealized, beautified, transfigured — he 
would have been the vainest of men if he had 
seen therein the reflection of himself. On the 
contraiy, he said, in the spirit of that jealousy 
to which he was too prone, “Alas! this, then, 
is some ideal, already seen perhaps, compared 
to which how commonplace am 1!” and thus 
persuading himself, no wonder that the senti- 
ments surrounding this unrecognized archetype 
appeared to him overromantic. His taste ac- 
knowledged the beauty of form which clothed 
them ; his heart envied the ideal that inspired 
them. But they seemed so remote from him; 
they put the dream-land of the writer farther 
and farther from his work-day real life. 

In this frame of mind, then, he had written to 
Savarin, and the answer he received hardened 
it still more. Savarin had replied, as was his 
laudable wont in correspondence, the very day 
he received Graham’s letter, and therefore be- 
fore he had even seen Isaura. In his reply he 
spoke much of the success her w'ork had ob- 
tained ; of the invitations showered upon her, 
and the sensation she caused in the salons; of 
her future career, with hope that she might even 
rival Madame de Grantmesnil some day, when 
her ideas became emboldened by maturer expe- 
rience, and a closer study of that model of elo- 
quent style — saying that the young editor was ev- 
idently becoming enamored of his fair contribu-. 
tor ; and that Madame Savarin had ventured the 
prediction that the signorina’s roman would end 
in the death of the heroine and the marriage of 
the writer. 


CHAPTER V. 

And still the weeks glided on : autumii suc- 
ceeded to summer, the winter to autumn ; the 
season of Paris was at its height. The won- 
drous Capital seemed to repay its imperial em- 
bellisher by the splendor and the joy of its fetes. 
But the smiles on the face of Paris Avere hyp- 
ocritical and hollow. The empire itself had 
passed out of fiishion. Grave men and impar- 
tial observers felt anxious. Napoleon had re- 
nounced les idees NapoUoniennes. He was pass- 
ing into the category of constitutional sover- 
eigns, and reigning, not by his old undivided 
prestige, but by the grace of party. The press 
was free to circulate complaints as to the past 
and demands as to the future, beneath which the 
present reeled — ominous of earthquake. People 
asked themselves if it were possible that the em- 
pire could coexist with forms of government not 
imperial, yet not genuinely constitutional, with 
a majority daily yielding to a minority. The 


118 


THE PARISIANS. 


basis of universal suffrage was sapped. About 
this time the articles in the Sens Cominun, signed 
Pierre Pirmin, were creating not only considera- 
ble sensation, but marked effect on opinion ; and 
the sale of the journal was immense. 

Necessarily the repute and the position of 
Gustave Rameau, as the avowed editor of this 
potent journal, rose with its success. Nor only 
his repute and position; bank-notes of consid- 
erable value were transmitted to him by the 
publisher, with the brief statement that they 
were sent by the sole proprietor of the paper as 
the editor’s friir share of profit. The proprietor 
was never named, but Rameau took it for grant- 
ed that it was M. Lebeau. M. Lebeau he had 
never seen since the day he had brought him 
the list of contributors, and was then referred 
to the publisher, whom he supposed M. Lebeau 
had secured, and received the first quarter of 
his salary in advance. The salary was a trifle 
compared to the extra profits thus generously 
volunteered. He called at Lebeau’s office, and 
saw only the clerk, who said that his chef was 
abroad. 

Prosperity produced a marked change for the 
better, if not in the substance of Rameau’s char- 
acter, at least in his manners and social converse. 
He no longer exhibited that restless envy of ri- 
vals, which is the most repulsive symptom of 
vanity diseased. He pardoned Isaura her suc- 
cess ; nay, he was even pleased at it. The na- 
ture of her work did not clash with his own kind 
of writing. It was so thoroughly woman-like 
that one could not compare it to a man’s. More- 
over, that success had contributed largely to the 
profits by which he had benefited, and to his re- 
nown as editor of the journal which accorded 
place to this new-found genius. But there was 
a deeper and more potent cause for sympathy 
with the success of his fair young contributor. 
He had imperceptibly glided into love with her 
— a love very different from that with which poor 
Julie Caumartin flattered herself she had inspired 
the young poet. Isaura was one of those wom- 
en for whom, even in natures the least chivalric, 
love — however ardent — can not fail to be accom- 
panied with a certain reverence — the reverence 
with which the ancient knighthood, in its love 
for women, honored the ideal purity of woman- 
hood itself. Till then Rameau had ne^■er re- 
vered any one. 

Oil her side, brought so frequently into com- 
munication with the young conductor of the 
journal in which she wrote, Isaura entertained 
for him a friendly, almost sister-like affection. 

I do not think that, even if she had never 
known the Englishman, she would have really 
become in love with Rameau, despite the pic- 
turesque beauty of his countenance, and the con- 
geniality of literary pursuits ; but perhaps she 
might have fancied herself in love with him. 
And till one, whether man or woman, has 
known real love, fancy is readily mistaken for 
it. But little as she had seen of Graham, and 
that little not in itself wholly favorable to him, 
she knew in her heart of hearts that his image 
would never be replaced by one equally dear. 
Perhdps in those qualities that placed him in 
opposition to her she felt his attractions. The 
poetical in woman exaggerates the worth of the 
practical in man. Still for Rameau her exqui- 
sitely kind and sympathizing nature conceived 


one of those sentiments which in woman are al- 
most angel-like. We have seen in her letters 
to Madame de Grantmesnil that from the first 
he inspired her with a compassionate interest ; 
then the compassion was checked by her percep- 
tion of his more unamiable and envious attri- 
butes. But now those attributes, if still exist- 
ent, had ceased to be apparent to her, and the 
compassion became unalloyed. Indeed, it was 
thus so far increased that it was impossible for 
any friendly observer to look at the beautiful 
face of this youth, prematurely wasted and worn, 
without the kindliness of pity. His prosperity 
had brightened and sweetened the expression of 
that face, but it had not effaced the vestiges of 
decay ; rather perhaps deepened them, for the 
duties of his post necessitated a regular labor, to 
which he had been unaccustomed, and the reg- 
ular labor necessitated, or seemed to him to ne- 
cessitate, an increase of fatal stimulants. He 
imbibed absinthe with every thing he drank, and 
to absinthe he united opium. This, of course, 
Isaura knew not, any more than she knew of 
his liaison with the “ Ondine” of his muse ; she 
saw only the increasing delicacy of his face and 
form, contrasted by his increased geniality and 
liveliness of spirits, and the contrast saddened 
her. Intellectually, too, she felt for him com- 
passion. She recognized and respected in him 
the yearnings of a genius too weak to perform 
a tithe of what, in the arrogance of youth, it 
promised to its ambition. She saw, too, those 
struggles between a higher and a lower self, to 
which a weak degree of genius, united with a 
strong degree of arrogance, is so often subject- 
ed. Perhaps she overestimated the degree of 
genius, and what, if rightly guided, it could do; 
but she did, in the desire of her own heavenlier 
instinct, aspire to guide it heavenward. And 
as if she were twenty years older than himself, 
she obeyed that desire in remonstrating and 
warning and urging, and the young man took 
all these “preachments” with a pleased submis- 
sive patience. Such, as the new year dawned 
upon the grave of the old one, was the position 
between these two. And nothing more was 
heard from Graham Vane. 

■ 

CHAPTER VI. 

It has now become due to Graham Vane, and 
to his place in the estimation of my readers, to 
explain somewhat more distinctly the nature of 
the quest in prosecution of which he had sought 
the aid of the Parisian police, and, under an as- 
sumed name, made the acquaintance of M. Le- 
beau. 

The best way of discharging this duty will 
perhaps be to place before the reader the con- 
tents of the letter which passed under Graham’s 
eyes on the day in which the heart of the writer 
ceased to beat. 

“ Confidential. 

To he opened immediately after my deaths and 
before the perusal of my will. 

‘ ‘ Richard King. 

“To Graham Vane, Esq. 

“My dear Graham, — By the direction on 
the envelope of this letter, ‘ Before the perusal 


119 


THE PARISIANS. 


of my will,’ I have wished to save you from the 
disappointment you would naturally experience 
if you learned my bequest without being prevised 
of the conditions which I am about to impose 
upon your honor. You will see ere you con- 
clude this letter that you are the only man living 
to whom I could intrust the secret it contains 
and the task it enjoins. 

“You are aware that I was not born to the 
fortune that passed to me by the death of a dis- 
tant relation, who had, in my earlier youth, chil- 
dren of his own. I was an only son, left an or- 
phan at the age of sixteen with a very slender 
pittance. My guardians designed me for the 
medical profession. I began my studies at 
Edinburgh, and was sent to Paris to complete 
them. It so chanced that there I lodged in the 
same house with an artist named Auguste Du- 
val, who, failing to gain his livelihood as a paint- 
er, in what — for his style was ambitious — is 
termed the Historical School, had accepted the 
humbler calling, of a drawing-master. He had 
practiced in that branch of the profession for sev- 
eral years at Tours, having a good clientele among 
English families settled there. This clientele^ as 
■ he frankly confessed, he had lost from some ir- 
regularities of conduct. He was not a bad man, 
but of convivial temper, and easily led into temp- 
tation. He had removed to Paris a few months 
licfore I made his acquaintance. He obtained a 
few pupils, and often lost them as soon as gained. 
He was unpunctual and addicted to drink. But 
he had a small pension, accorded to him, he was 
wont to say mysteriously, by some high-born 
kinsfolk, too proud to own connection with a 
ilrawing-master, and on the condition that he 
hhould never name them. He never did name 
them to me, and I do not know to this day 
%vhether the story of this noble relationship was 
true or false. A pension, however, he did re- 
ceive quarterly from some person or other, and 
it was an unhappy provision for him. It tended 
to make him an idler in his proper calling, and 
whenever he received the payment he spent it in 
debauch, to the neglect, while it lasted, of his 
pupils. This man had residing with him a young 
daughter, singularly beautiful. You may divine 
the rest. I fell in love with her — a love deep- 
ened by the compassion with which she inspired 
me. Her father left her so frequently that, liv- 
ing on the same floor, we saw much of each oth- 
er. Parent and child were often in great need — 
lacking even fuel or food. Of course I assisted 
them to the utmost of my scanty means. Much 
as I was fascinated by Louise Duval, I was not 
blind to great defects in her character. She was 
capricious, vain, aware of her beauty, and sighing 
for the pleasures or the gauds beyond her reach. 
I knew that she did not love me — there was little, 
indeed, to captivate her fancy in a poor, thread- 
bare medical student — and yet I fondly imagined 
that my own persevering devotion would at length 
win her affections. 1 spoke to her father more 
than once of my hope some day to make Louise 
ray wife. This hope, I must frankly acknowl- 
edge, he never encouraged. On the contrary, 
he treated it with scorn — ‘his child with her 
beauty would look much higher’ — but he con- 
tinued all the same to accept my assistance, and 
to sanction my visits. At length my slender purse 
w'as pretty well exhausted, and the luckless draw- 
ing-master was so harassed with petty debts that 
I 


farther credit became impossible. At this time 
I happened to hear from a fellow-student that 
his sister, who was the principal of a Ladies’ 
School in Cheltenham, had commissioned him to 
look out for a first-rate teacher of drawing, with 
whom her elder pupils could converse in Erench, 
but who should be sufficiently acquainted with 
English to make his instructions intelligible to 
the young. The salary was liberal, the school 
large and of high repute, and his appointment to 
it would open to an able teacher no inconsider- 
able connection among private families. I com- 
municated this intelligence to Duval. He caught 
at it eagerly. He had learned at Tours to speak 
English fluently, and as his professional skill was 
of high order, and he was popular with several 
eminent artists, he obtained certificates as to his 
talents, which my fellow-student forwarded to 
England with specimens of Duval’s drawings. 
In a few days the offer of an engagement ar- 
rived, was accepted, and Duval and his daugh- 
j ter set out for Cheltenham. At the eve of 
their departure Louise, profoundly dejected at 
the prospect of banishment to a foreign country, 
and placing no trust in her father's reform to 
steady habits, evinced a tenderness for me hith- 
erto new — she vept bitterly. She allowed me 
to believe that her tears flowed at the thought 
of parting with me, and even besought me to ac- 
company them to Cheltenham — if only for a few 
days. You may suppose how delightedly I com- 
plied with the request. Duval had been about 
a week at the watering-place, and was discharging 
the duties he had undertaken with such unwont- 
ed steadiness and regularity that I began sorrow- 
fully to feel I had no longer an excuse for not 
returning to my studies at Paris, when the poor 
teacher was seized with a fit of paralysis. He 
lost the power of movement, and his mind was 
affected. The medical attendant called in said 
that he might linger thus for some time, but that, 
even if he recovered his intellect, which was more 
than doubtful, he would never be able to resume 
his profession. I could not leave Louise in cir- 
cumstances so distressing — 1 remained. The 
little money Duval had brought with him from 
Paris was now exhausted, and when the day on 
which he had been in the habit of receiving his 
quarter’s pension came round, Louise was unable 
even to conjecture how it was to be applied for. 
It seems he had always gone for it in person, but 
to whom he went was a secret which he had 
never divulged. And at this critical juncture his 
mind was too enfeebled even to comprehend us 
when we inquired. I had already drawn from 
the small capital on the interest of w'hieh I had 
maintained myself ; I now drew out most of the 
remainder. But this was a resource that could 
not last long. Nor could I, without seriously 
compromising Louise’s character, be constantly 
in the house with a girl so young, and whose sole 
legitimate protector was thus afflicted. There 
seemed but one alternative to that of abandoning 
her altogether — viz., to make her my wife, to 
conclude the studies necessary to obtain my di- 
ploma, and purchase some partnership in a small 
country practice with the scanty surplus that 
might be left of my capital. I placed this option 
before Louise timidly, for I could not bear the 
thought of forcing her inclinations. She seemed 
much moved by what she called ray generosity : 
she consented — we were married. I was, as you 


120 


THE PARISIANS. 


may conceive, wholly ignorant of French law. 
AVe were married according to the English cere- 
mony and the Protestant ritual. Shortly after 
our marriage we all three returned to Paris, tak- 
ing an apartment in a quarter remote from that 
in which we had before lodged, in order to avoid 
any harassment to which such small creditors 
as Duval had left behind him might subject us. 
I resumed my studies with redoubled energy, and 
Louise was necessarily left much alone with her 
poor father in the daytime. The defects in her 
character became more and more visible. She 
reproached me for the solitude to which I con- 
demned her ; our poverty galled her ; she had 
no kind greeting for me when 1 returned at even- 
ing, wearied out. Before marriage she had not 
loved me — after marriage, alas! I fear she hated. 
We had been returned to Paris some months 
when poor Duval died ; he had never recovered 
his faculties, nor had we ever learned from whom 
his pension had been received. Very soon aft- 
er her father’s death I observed a singular change 
in the humor and manner of Louise. She was 
no longer peevish, irascible, reproachful, but tac- 
iturn and thoughtful. She seemed to mo un- 
der the influence of some suppressed excitement : 
her cheeks flushed and her eyes abstracted. At 
length one evening when I returned I found her 
gone. She did not come back that night nor the 
next day. It was impossible for me to conjec- 
ture what had become of her. She had no 
friends, so far as I knew — no one had visited at 
our squalid apartment. The poor house in which 
we lodged had no concierge whom I could ques- 
tion, but the ground-floor was occupied by a 
small tobacconist’s shop, and the woman at the 
counter told me that for some days before my 
wife’s disappearance she had observed her pass 
the shop window in going out in the afternoon 
and returning toward the evening. Two terrible 
conjectures beset me : either in her walks she 
had met some admirer, with whom she had fled, 
or, unable to bear the companionship and poverty 
of a union which she had begun to loathe, she had 
gone forth to drown herself in the Seine. On the 
tliird day from her flight I received the letter I 
inclose. Possibly the handwriting may serve 
you as a guide in the mission I intrust to you. 

“ ‘ Monsieur, — You have deceived me vilely 
— taking advantage of my inexperienced youth 
and friendless position to decoy me into an ille- 
gal marriage. My only consolation under my ca- 
lamity and disgrace is that I am at least free from 
a detested bond. You will not see me again — it 
is idle to attempt to do so. I have obtained ref- 
uge with relations whom I have been fortunate 
enough to discover, and to whom I intrust my 
fate. And even if you could learn the shelter I 
have sought, and have the audacity to molest 
me, you would but subject yourself to the chas- 
tisement you so richly deserve. 

“‘Louise Duval.’ 

“ At the perusal of this cold-hearted, ungrate- 
ful letter, the love I had felt for this woman — al- 
ready much shaken by her wayward and per- 
verse temper — vanished from my heart, never to 
return. But, as an honest man, my conscience 
was terribly stung. Could it be possible that I 
had unknowingly deceived her — that our mar- 
riage was not legal ? 


“When I recovered from the stun which was 
the first effect of her letter, I sought the opinion 
of an avoui in the neighborhood, named Sartiges, 
and, to my dismay, 1 learned that while I, mar- 
rying according to the customs of my own coun- 
try, was legally bound to Louise in England, and 
could not marry another, the marriage was in all 
ways illegal for her — being without the consent 
of her relations while she was under age, without 
the ceremonials of the Roman Catholic Church, 
to which, though I never heard any profession 
of religious belief from her or her father, it might 
fairly be presumed that she belonged, and, above 
' all, without the form of civil contract which is in- 
I dispensable to the legal marriage of a French 
I subject. 

I “The avoiic said that l;lie marriage, therefore, 

I in itself was null, and that Louise could, without 
incurring legal penalties for bigamy, marry again 
in France according to the French laws; but 
I that under the circumstances it was probable that 
her next of kin would apply on her behalf to the 
proper court for the formal annulment of the mar- 
I riage, which would be the most effectual mode of 
j saving her from any molestation on my pai t, and 
remove all possible question hereafter’ as to her 
] single state and absolute right to remarry. I 
I had better remain quiet, and wait for intimation 
i of furtlier proceedings. 1 knew not what else to 
do, and necessarily submitted. 

“From this wretched listlessness of mind, al- 
ternated now by vehement resentment against 
Louise, now by the reproach of my own sense 
j of honor, in leaving that honor in so question- 
! able a point of view, I was arroused by a letter 
from the distant kinsman by whom hitherto I 
j had been go neglected. In the previous year he 
had lost one of his two children : the other was 
I just dead : no nearer relation now surviving stood 
j between me and my chance of inheritance from 
him. He wrote word of his domestic affliction 
with a manly sorrow which touched me, said 
that his health was failing, and begged me, as 
soon as possible, to come and visit him in Scot- 
land. I went, and continued to reside with him 
till his death, some months afterward. By his 
w’ill 1 succeeded to his ample fortune on condition 
of taking his name. 

“As soon as the affairs connected wdth thL 
inheritance permitted, I returned to Paris, and 
again saw M. Sartiges. 1 had never heard from 
Louise, nor from any one connected with her, since 
the letter you have read. No steps had been tak- 
en to annul the marriage, and sufficient time had 
elapsed to render it improbable that such steps 
would be taken now. But if no such steps were 
taken, however free from the marriage - bond 
Louise might be, it clearly remained binding on 
myself. 

“At my request M. Sartiges took the most 
vigorous measures that occurred to him to ascer- 
tain where Louise was, and what and who was 
the relation with w'hom she asserted she had found 
refuge. The police were employed ; advertise- 
ments were issued, concealing names, but suffi- 
ciently clear to be intelligible to Louise, if they 
came under her eye, and to the effect that if any 
informality in our marriage existed, she W'as im- 
plored for her own sake to remove it by a sec- 
ond ceremonial — answer to be addressed to the 
avouL No answer came; the police had hither- 
I to failed of discovering her, but were sanguine 


THE PARISIANS. 


121 


of success, when a few weeks after these adver- 
tisements a packet reached JM. Sartiges, inclosing 
the certificates annexed to this letter, of the death 
of Louise Duval at Munich. The certificates, 
as you will see, are to appearance officially at- 
tested and unquestionably genuine. So they 
Avere considei'ed by M. Sartiges as well as by 
myself. Here then all inquiry ceased — the po- 
lice were dismissed. I was free. By little and 
little I overcame the painful impressions which 
my ill-starred union and the announcement of I 
Louise's early death bequeathed. Rich, and of 
active mind, I learned to dismiss the trials of my 
youth as a gloomy dream. I entered into pub- 
lic life ; I made myself a creditable position ; 
became acquainted with your aunt ; we were 
wedded, and the beauty of her nature embellished 
mine. Alas, alas ! two years after our marriage 
— nearly five years after I had received the cer- 
tificates of Louise’s death — I and your aunt made 
a summer excursion into the country of the 
Rhine ; on our return we rested at Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle. One day while there I was walking alone 
ill the environs of the town, when, on the road, 
a little girl, seemingly about five years old, in 
chase of a butteiHy, stumbled and fell just before 
my feet ; I took her up, and as she was crying 
more from the shock of the fall than any actual 
hurt, I was still trying my best to comfort her, 
Avhen a lady some paces behind her came up, 
and in taking the child from my arms as I was 
bending over her, thanked me in a voice that 
made my heart stand still ; I looked up, and be- 
held Louise. 

“ It was not till I had convulsively clasped her 
hand and uttered her name that she recognized 
me. I was, no doubt, the more altered of the 
two — prosperity and happiness had left little 
trace of the needy, care-worn, threadbare student. 
But if she were the last to recognize, she was 
the first to recover self-possession. The expres- 
sion of her face became hard and set. I can 
not pretend to repeat with any verbal accuracy 
the brief converse that took place between us, 
as she placed the child on the grass bank beside 


that I scarcely struggled under it; only, as she 
turned to leave me, I suddenly recollected that 
the child, when taken from my arms, had called 
her ^Maman^' and, judging by the apparent age 
of the child, it must have been born but a few 
months after Louise had left me — that it must 
be mine. And so, in my dreary woe, I faltered 
out, ‘ But what of your infant ? Surely that has 
on me a claim that you relinquish for yourself. 
\ou were not unfaithful to me while you deem- 
ed you were my wife?’ 

“‘Heavens! can you insult me by such a 
doubt. No!’ she cried out, impulsively and 
haughtily. ‘ But as I was not legally your 
wife, the child is not legally yours ; it is mine, 
and only mine. Nevertheless, if you wish to 
claim it — ’ Here she paused as in doubt. I saw 
at once that she was prepared to resign to me 
the child if I had urged her to do so. I must 
own, Avith a pang of remorse, that I recoiled 
from such a proposal. What could I do Avith 
the child ? Hoav explain to my Avife the cause 
of my interest in it ? If only a natural child of 
mine, I should have shrunk from owning to Jan- 
et a youthful error. But, as it Avas — the child 
by a former marriage — the former Avife still Ha'- 
ing — my blood ran cold Avith dread. And if I 
did take the child — invent Avhat story I might as 
to its parentage, should I not expose myself, ex- 
pose Janet, to terrible constant danger? The 
mother’s natural affection might urge her at any 
time to seek tidings of the child, and in so doing 
she might easily discover my neiv name, and, 
perhaps years hence, establish on me her OAvn 
claim. 

“No, I could not risk such perils. I replied, 
sullenly, ‘ You say rightly ; the child is yours — 
only yours.’ I Avas about to add an otter of pe- 
I cuniary proA'ision for it, but Louise had already 
I turned scornfully toAvard the bank on Avhich 
I she had left the infant. I saw her snatch from 
I the child’s hand some wild floAvers the poor 
I thing had been gathering ; and hoAv often have 
I I thought of the rude way in which she did it — 
j not as a mother Avho loves her child. Just then 
the path, bade her stay there quietly, and Avalk- 1 other passengers ajipeared on the road— tAvo of 
ed on Avith me some paces as if she did not Avish j them I knew— an English couple very intimate 


the child to hear Avhat Avas said. 

“The purport of Avhat passed Avas to this ef- 
fect : She refused to explain the certificates of 
her death further than that, becoming aAvare of 
Avhat she called the ‘ persecution’ of the adA'er- 
tisements issued and inquiries instituted, she had 
caused those documents to be sent to the ad- 
dress given in the advertisement, in order to 
terminate all further molestation. But hoAV 
they could have been obtained, or by Avhat art 
so ingeniously forged as to deceive the acute- 
ness of a practiced laAvyer, I knoAV not to this 
day. She declared, indeed, that she Avas noAv 
happy, in easy circumstances, and that if I Avish- 
ed to" make some reparation for the Avrong I had 
done her, it Avould be to leave her in peace ; and 
in case — Avhich Avas not likely — Ave ever met 
again, to regard and treat her as a stranger ; 
that she, on her part, neA'er would molest me, 
and that the certified death of Louise Duval left 
me as free to marry again as she considered her- 
self to be. 

“ My mind was so confused, so beivildered, 
Avhile she thus talked, that I did not attempt to 
interrupt her. The bloAv had so crushed me 


Avith Lady Janet and myself. They stopped to 
accost me, Avhile Louise passed by Avith the in- 
fant tOAvard the tOAvn. I turned in the opposite 
direction, and strove to collect my thoughts. 
Terrible as was the discovery thus suddenly 
made, it was evident that Louise had as strong 
an interest as myself to conceal it. Tliere Avas 
little chance that it Avould ever be divulged. 
Her dress and that of the child Avere those of 
persons in the richer classes of life. After all, 
doubtless, the child needed not pecuniary assist- 
ance from me, and Avas surely best off under the 
mother’s care. Thus I sought to comfort and 
to delude myself. 

“ The next day Janet and I left Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle, and returned to England. But it Avas im- 
possible for me to banish the dreadful thought 
that Janet Avas not legally my wife ; that could 
she even guess the secret lodged in my breast 
she Avould be lost to me forever, even though 
she died of the separation (you knoAv well hoAv 
tenderly she loved me). My nature undei'Avent 
a silent revolution. I had previously cherished 
the ambition common to most men in public life 
— the ambition for fame, foi* place, for poAvei. 


122 


THE PARISIANS. 


That ambition left me ; I shrunk from the 
thought of becoming too well known, lest Louise 
or her connections, as yet ignorant of my new 
name, might more easily learn what the world 
knew — viz., that I had previously borne anoth- 
er name — the name of her husband — and find- 
ing me wealthy and honored, might hereafter be 
tempted to claim for herself or her daughter the 
ties she abjured for both while she deemed me 
poor and despised. But partly my conscience, 
partly the influence of the angel by my side, com- 
pelled me to seek whatever means of doing good 
to others position and circumstances placed at my 
disposal. I was alarmed when even such quiet 
exercise of mind and fortune acquired a sort of 
celebrity. How painfully I shrunk from it! 
The world attributed my dread of publicity to 
unaffected modesty. The world praised me, 
and I knew myself an impostor. But the years 
stole on. I heard no more of Louise or her 
child, and my fears gradually subsided. Yet I 
was consoled when the two children born to me 
by Janet died in their infancy. Had they lived, 
who can tell whether something might not have 
transpired to prove them illegitimate ? 

“ I must hasten on. At last came the great 
and crushing calamity of my life : I lost the 
woman who was my all in all. At least she was 
spared the discovery that would have deprived 
me of the right of tending her death-bed, and 
leaving within her tomb a place vacant for my- 
self. 

“ But after the first agonies that followed her 
loss, the conscience I had so long sought to 
tranquillize became terribly reproachful. Louise 
had forfeited all right to my consideration, but 
my guiltless child had not done so. Did it live 
still ? If so, was it not the heir to my fortunes 
— the only child left to me ? True, I have the 
absolute right to dispose of my wealth : it is not 
in land ; it is not entailed ; but was not the 
daughter I had forsaken morally the first claim- 
ant? Was no reparation due to her? You re- 
member that my physician ordei ed me, some lit- 
tle time after your aunt’s death, to seek a tem- 
porary change of scene. I obeyed, and went 
away no one knew whither. Well, I repaired 
to Paris ; there I sought M. Sartiges, the avoue. 
I found he had been long dead. I discovered 
his executors, and inquired if any papers or cor- 
respondence between Richard Macdonald and 
himself many years ago were in existence. All 
such documents, with others not returned to cor- 
respondents at his decease, had been burned by 
his desire. No possible clew to the whereabouts 
of Louise, should any have been gained since I 
last saw her, was left. What then to do I knew 
not. I did not dare to make inquiries through 
strangers, which, if discovering my child, might 
also bring to light a marriage that would have 
dishonored the memory of my lost saint. I re- 
turned to England feeling that my days were 
numbered. It is to you that I transmit the task 
of those researches which I could not institute. 
I bequeath to you, with the exception of trifling 
legacies and donations to public charities, the 
whole of my fortune. But you will understand 
by this letter that it is to be held on a trust which 
I can not specify in my will. I could not, with- 
out dishonoring the venerated name of your aunt, 
indicate as the heiress of my wealth a child by a 
wife living at the time I married Janet. I can 


not form any words for such a devise which 
would not arouse gos.sip and suspicion, and fur- 
nish ultimately a clew to the discovery I would 
shun. I calculate that, after all deductions, the 
sum that will devolve to you will be about two 
hundred and twenty thousand pounds. That 
which I mean to be absolutely and at once 
yours is the comparatively trifling legacy of 
£20,000. If Louise’s child be not living, or 
if you find full reason to suppose that, despite 
appearances, the child is not mine, the whole 
of my fortune lapses to you ; but should Lou- 
ise be surviving and need pecuniary aid, you 
will contrive that she may have such an annu- 
ity as you may deem fitting, without learning 
whence it come. You perceive that it is your 
object if possible, even more than mine, to pre- 
seiwe free from slur the name and memory of 
her who was to you a second mother. All ends 
we desire would be accomplished could you, on 
discovering my lost child, feel that, without con- 
straining your inclinations, you could make her 
your wife. tShe would then naturally share with 
you my fortune, and all claims of justice and 
duty would be quietly appeased. She would 
now be of age suitable to yours. When I saw 
her at Aix she gave promise of inheriting no 
small share of her mother’s beauty. If Louise’s 
assurance of her easy circumstances were true, 
her daughter has possibly been educated and 
reared with tenderness and care. You have al- 
ready assured me that you have no prior attach- 
ment. But if, on discovering this child, you 
find her already married, or one whom you 
could not love nor esteem, I leave it implicit- 
ly to your honor and judgment to determine 
what share of the £200,000 left in your hands 
should be consigned to her. She may have been 
corrupted by her mother’s principles. She may 
— heaven forbid ! — have fallen into evil courses, 
and wealth would be misspent in her hands. In 
that case a competence sufficing to save her from 
further degradation, from the temptations of pov- 
erty, would be all that I desire you to devote 
from my wealth. On the contrary, you may 
find in her one who, in all respects, ought to be 
my chief inheritor. All this I leave, in full con- 
fidence, to you, as being, of all the men I know, 
the one who unites the highest sense of honor 
with the largest share of practical sense and 
knowledge of life. The main difficulty, what- 
ever this lost girl may derive from my substance, 
will be in devising some means to convey it to 
her, so that neither she nor those around her 
may trace the bequest to' me. She can never be 
acknowledged as my child — never! Your rev- 
erence for the beloved dead forbids that. This 
difficulty your clear strong sense must overcome ; 
mine is blinded by the shades of death. You 
too will deliberately consider hotv to institute 
the inquiries after mother and child so as not to 
betray our secret. This will require great cau- 
tion. You will probably commence at Paris, 
through the agency of the police, to whom you 
will be very guarded in your communications. 
It is most unfortunate that I have no miniature 
of Louise, and that any description of her must 
be so vague that it may not serve to discover 
her ; but such as it is, it may prevent your mis- 
taking for her some other of her name. Louise 
was above the common height, and looked taller 
than she was, with the peculiar combination of 


123 


THE PARISIANS. 


very dark hair, very fair complexion, and light 
gray eyes. She would now be somewhere under 
the age of forty. She was not without accom- 
plishments, derived from the companionship with 
her father. She spoke English fluently ; she 
drew with taste, and even with talent. You 
will see the prudence of conflning research at 
flrst to Louise, rather than to the child who is 
ttie principal object of it ; for it is not till you 
can ascertain what has become of her that you 
can trust the accuracy of any information re- 
specting the daughter, whom I assume, perhaps 
after all erroneously, to be mine. Though Louise 
talked with such levity of holding herself free to 
marry, the birth of her child might be sufficient 
injury to her reputation to become a serious ob- 
stacle to such second nuptials, not having taken 
formal steps to annul her marriage with myself. 
If not thus remarried, there would be no reason 
why she should not resume her maiden name of 
Duval, as she did in the signature of her letter to 
me— finding that I had ceased to molest her by 
the inquiries to elude which she had invented the 
false statement of her death. It seems probable, 
therefore, that she is residing somewhere in Paris, 
and in the name of Duval. Of course the bur- 
den of uncertainty as to your future can not be 
left to oppress you for an indefinite length of time. 
If at the end, say, of two years, your researches 
have wholly failed, consider three-fourths of my 
Avhole fortune to have passed to you, and put by 
the fourth to accumulate, should the child after- 
w'ard be discovered, and satisfy your judgment as 
to her claims on me as her father. Should she 
not, it will be a reserve fund for your own chil- 
dren. But oh, if my child could be found in time ! 
and oh, if she be all that could win your heart, 
and be the wife you would select from free choice ! 
I can say no more. Pity me, and judge leniently 
of Janet’s husband. R. K.” 

The key to Graham’s conduct is now given : 
the deep sorrow that took him to the tomb of 
the aunt he so revered, and whose honored mem- 
ory was subjected to so great a risk ; the slight- 
ness of change in his expenditure and mode of 
life, after an inheritance supposed to be so am- 
ple ; the abnegation of his political ambition ; 
the subject of his inquiries, and the cautious .re- 
serve imposed upon them ; above all, the posi- 
tion toward Isaura in which he was so cruelly 
placed. 

Certainly, his first thought in revolving the 
conditions of his trust had been that of marriage 
with this lost child of Richard King’s, should 
she be discovered single, disengaged, and not re- 
pulsive to his inclinations. Tacitly he subscribed 
to the reasons for this course alleged by the de- 
ceased. It was the simplest and readiest plan 
of uniting justice to the rightful inheritor with 
care for a secret important to the honor of his 
aunt, of Richard King himself — his benefactor 
— of the illustrious house from which Lady Jan- 
et had sprung. Perhaps, too, the considera- 
tion that by this course a fortune so useful to 
his career was secured was not without influ- 
ence on the mind of a man naturally ambitious. 
But on that consideration he forbade himself to 
dwell. He put it away from him as a sin. Yet 
to marriage with any one else until his mission 
was fulfilled, and the uncertainty as to the ex- 
tent of his fortune was dispelled, there interposed 


grave practical obstacles. How could he honestly 
present himself to a girl and to her parents in the 
light of a rich man, when in reality he might be 
but a poor man ? How could he refer to any law- 
yer the conditions which rendered impossible any 
settlement that touched a shilling of the large 
sum which at any day he might have to trans- 
fer to another ? Still, when once fully con- 
scious how deep was the love with which Isaura 
had inspired him, the idea of wedlock with the 
daughter of Richard King, if she yet lived and 
was single, became inadmissible. The orphan 
condition of the young Italian smoothed away 
the obstacles to proposals of marriage which 
would have embarrassed his addresses to girls 
of his own rank, and with parents who would 
have demanded settlements. And if he had 
found Isaura alone on that day on which he had 
seen her last, he would doubtless have yielded to 
the voice of his heart, avowed his love, wooed 
her own, and committed both to the tie of be- 
trothal. We have seen how rudely such yearn- 
ings of his heart were repelled on that last inter- 
view. His English prejudices were so deeply 
rooted that, even if he had been wholly free from 
the trust bequeathed to him, he would have re- 
coiled from marriage with a girl w'ho, in the ar- 
dor for notoriety, could link herself with such as- 
sociates as Gustave Rameau, by habits a Bo- 
hemian, and by principles a Socialist. 

In flying from Paris he embraced the resolve 
to banish all thought of wedding Isaura, and de- 
vote himself sternly to the task which had so 
sacred a claim upon him. Not that he could 
endure the idea of marrying another, even if the 
lost heiress should be all that his heart could 
have worshiped, had that heart been his own 
to give ; but he was impatient of the burden heap- 
ed on him — of the fortune which might not be 
his, of the uncertainty which paralyzed all his 
ambitious schemes for the future. 

Yet strive as he would — and no man could 
strive more resolutely — he could not succeed in 
banishing the image of Isaura. It was with him 
always ; and with it a sense of irreparable loss, of 
a terrible void, of a pining anguish. 

And the success of his inquiries at Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle, while sufficient to detain him in the place, 
was so slight, and advanced by such slow de- 
grees, that it furnished no continued occupation 
to his restless mind. M. Renard was acute and 
painstaking. But it was no easy matter to ob.* 
tain any trace of a Parisian visitor to so popular 
a Spa so many years ago. The name Duval, 
too, was so common, that at Aix, as we have seen 
at Paris, time was wasted in the chase of a Du- 
val who proved not to be the lost Louise. At 
last M. Renard chanced on a house in which, in 
the year 1849, two ladies from Paris had lodged 
for three weeks. One was Madame Duval, the 
other Madame Marigny. They were both young, 
both very handsome, and much of the same height 
and coloring. But Madame Marigny was the 
handsomer of the two. Madame Duval frequent- 
ed the gaming tables, and was apparently of very 
lively temper. Madame Marigny lived very qui- 
etly, rarely or never stirred out, and seemed in 
delicate health. She, however, quitted the apart- 
ment somewhat abruptly, and, to the best of the 
lodging-house keeper’s recollection, took rooms 
in the country near Aix — she could not remem- 
ber where. About two months after the depart- 


124 


THE PARISIANS. 


ure of Madame Marigny, Madame Duval also 
left Aix, and in company with a French gentle- 
man who had visited her much of late — a hand- 
some' man of striking appearance. The lodging- 
house keeper did not know what or who he was. 
She rememl)ered that he used to be announced 
to Madame Duval by the name of M. Achille. 
Madame Duval had never been seen again by 
the lodging-house keeper after she had left. But 
Madame Marigny she had once seen, nearly five 
years after she had quitted the lodgings — seen 
her by chance at the railway station, recognized 
her at once, and accosted her, offering her the 
old apartment. Madame Marigny had, howev- 
er, briefly replied that she was only at Aix for a 
few hours, and should quit it the same day. 

The inquiry now turned toward Madame Ma- 
rigny. The date in which the lodging-house keep- 
er had last seen her coincided with the year in 
which Richard King had met Louise. Possibly, 
therefore, she might have accompanied the latter 
to Aix at that time, and could, if found, give in- 
formation as to her subsequent history and pres- 
ent whereabouts. 

After a tedious search throughout all the en- 
virons of Aix, Graham himself came, by the mer- 
est accident, upon the vestiges of Louise’s friend. 
He had been wandering alone in the country 
round Aix, when a violent thunder-storm drove 
him to ask shelter in the house of a small farm- 
er, situated in a field, a little off the by-way 
which he had taken. While waiting for the ces- 
sation of the storm, and drying his clothes by the 
fire in a room that adjoined the kitchen, he en- 
tered into conversation with the farmer’s wife, a 
jdeasant, well-mannered person, and made some 
complimentary observation on a small sketch of 
the house in water-colors that hung upon the 
wall. “ Ah,'’ said the farmer’s wife, “ that was 
done by a French lady who lodged here many 
years ago. She drew very prettily, poor thing.” 

‘ ‘ A lady who lodged here many years ago — 
how many?” 

“Well, I guess somewhere about twenty.” 

“ Ah, indeed ! Was it a Madame Marigny ?” 

“ Bon Dieu! That was indeed her name. Did 
you know her ? I should be so glad to hear she 
is well and — I hope — happy. ” 

“I do not know where she is now, and am 
making inquiries to ascertain. Pray help me. 
How long did Madame Marigny lodge with you ?” 

“I think pretty well two months; yes, two 
months. She left a month after her confinement. ” 

“ She was confined here ?” 

“Yes. When she first came I had no idea 
that she was enceinte. She had a pretty figure, 
and no one would have guessed it, in the way she 
wore her shawl. Indeed, I only began to sus- 
pect it a few days before it happened, and that 
was so suddenly that all was happily over before 
we could send for the accoucheur." 

“ And the child lived ? A girl or a boy ?” 

“A girl — the prettiest baby.” 

“Did she take the child with her when she 
went?” 

“ No ; it was put out to nurse with a niece of 
my husband's who was confined about the same 
time. Madame paid liberally in advance, and 
continued to send money half yearly, till she 
came herself and took away the little girl.” 

“ When was that ? — a little less than five years 
after she had left it ?” 


“ Why, you know all about it, monsieur; yes, 
not quite five years after. She did not come to 
see me, which I thought unkind, but she sent 
me, through my niece-in-law, a real gold watch 
and a shawl. Poor dear lady — for lady she was 
all over — with proud ways, and would not bear 
to be questioned. But I am sure she was none 
of your French light ones, but an honest wife 
like myself, though she never said so.” 

“ And have you no idea where she was all the 
five years she was away, or where she Avent aft- 
er reclaiming her child ?” 

“No, indeed, monsieur.” 

“ But her remittances for the infant must have 
been made by letters, and the letters would have 
had postmarks?” 

“Well, I dare say, I am no scholar myself. 
But suppose you see Marie Hubert — that is my 
niece-in-law ; perhaps she has kept the envelopes.” 

“ Where does Madame Hubert live ?” 

“ It is just a league off’ by the short path ; you 
can’t miss the way. Her husband has a bit of 
land of his own, but he is also a carrier — ‘ Max 
Hubert, carrier,’ written over the door, just op- 
posite the first church you get to. The rain has 
ceased, but it may be too fiir for you to-day.” 

“ Not a bit of it. Many thanks.” 

“But if you find out the dear lady and see 
her, do tell her how pleased I should be to hear 
! good news of her and the little one.” 
j Graham strode on under the clearing skies to 
I the house indicated. He found Madame Hu- 
bert at home, and ready to answer all ques- 
jtions; but, alas! she had not the envelopes. 
Madame- Marigny, on removing the child, had 
asked for all the envelopes or letters, and car- 
ried them away with her. Madame Hubert, who 
was as little of a scholar as her aunt-in-law was, 
had never paid much attention to the postmarks 
on the envelopes, and the only one that she did 
, remember was the first, that contained a bank- 
note, and that postmark was “ Vienna.” 

“ But did not Madame Marigny’s letters ever 
give you an address to which to Avrite Avith news 
of her child ?” 

“I don't think she cared much for her child, 
monsieur. She kissed it very coldly Avhen she 
came to take it aAvay. I told the poor infant 
that that Avas her own mamma, and madame said, 
‘Yes, you may call me maman,’ in a tone of voice 
which — Avell, not at all like that of a mother. She 
brought Avith her a little bag Avhich contained 
some fine clothes for the child, and Avas very im- 
patient till the child had got them on.” 

“ Are you quite sure it was the same lady Avho 
left the cliild ?” 

“ Oh, there is no doubt of that. She was 
certainly tres belle, but I did not fancy her as 
aunt did. She carried her head very high, and 
looked rather scornful. However, I must say 
she behaved very generously.” 

“Still you have not ansAvered my question 
Avhether her letters contained no address.” 

“ She neA'er Avrote more than tAvo letters. One 
' inclosing the first remittance was but a few lines, 
saying that if the child Avas Avell and thriving, I 
need not write ; but if it died or became danger- 
ously ill, I might at any time Avrite a line to Ma- 
dame M , Poffte Restante, Vietina. She Avas 

traA'eling about, but the letter Avonld be sure to 
reach her sooner or later. The only other letter 
i I had Avas to apprise me that she Avas coming to 


THE PARISIANS. 125 


remove the child, and might be expected in three 
days after the receipt of her letter.” 

“And all the other communications from her 
Avere merely remittances in blank envelopes ?” 

“ExactlVso.” 

Graham, finding he could learn no more, took 
his departure. On his way home, meditating 
the new idea that his adventure that day suggest- 
ed, he resolved to proceed at once, accompanied 
by M. Renard, to Munich, and there learn what 
particulars could be yet ascertained respecting 
those certificates of the death of Louise Duval, 
to Avhich (sharing Richard King’s very natural 
belief that they had been very skillfully forged) 
he had hitherto attached no importance. 


CHAPTER VII. 

No satisfactory result attended the inquiries 
made at Munich, save, indeed, this certainty — the 
certificates attesting the decease of some person 
calling herself Louise Duval had not been forged. 
They were indubitably genuine. A lady bearing 
that name had arrived at one of the principal 
hotels late in the evening, and had there taken 
handsome rooms. She was attended by no serv- 
ant, but accompanied by a gentleman, who, how- 
ever, left the hotel as soon as he had seen her 
lodged to her satisfaction. The books of the hotel 
still retained the entry of her name — Madame 
Duval, Frangaise rentiere. On comparing the 
handwriting of this entry with the letter from 
Richard King’s first wife, Graham found it differ ; 
but then it was not certain, though probable, that 
the entry had been written by the alleged Madame 
Duval herself. She was visited the next day by 
the same gentleman who had accompanied her on 
arriving. He dined and spent the evening with 
her. But no one at the hotel could remember 
what was the gentleman’s name, nor even if he 
were announced by any name. He never called 
again. Two days afterward Madame Duval was 
taken ill ; a doctor was sent for, and attended 
tier till her death. This doctor was easily found. 
He remembered the case perfectly — congestion 
of the lungs, apparently caused by cold caught 
on her journey. Fatal symptoms rapidly mani- 
fested themselves, and she died on the third day 
from the seizure. She was a young and hand- 
some woman. He had asked her during her 
short illness if he should not write to her friends 
— if there were no one she would wish to be 
sent for. She replied that there was only one 
friend, to Avhom she had already written, and 
who would arrive in a day or two. And on in- 
quiring, it appeared that she had written such a 
letter, and taken it herself to the post on the. 
morning of the day she Avas taken ill. 

She had in her purse not a large sum, but mon- 
ey enough to cover all her expenses, including 
those of her funeral, Avhich, according to the laAv 
in force at the place, followed very quickly on 
her decease. The arrival of the friend to Avhom 
she had Avritten being expected, her effects Avere, 
in the mean Avhile, sealed up. The day after 
her death a letter arrived for her, Avhich Avas 
opened. It Avas evidently Avritten by a man, 
and ap})arently by a lover. It expressed an im- 
passioned regret that the writer Avas unaA’oidably 
prevented returning to Munich so soon as he had 


hoped, but trusted to see his dear bouton de rose 
in the course of the following week ; it Avas only 
signed Achille, and gave no address. Two or 
three days after a lady, also young and hand- 
some, arriA’ed at the hotel, and inquired for Ma- 
dame Duval. She was greatly shocked at hear- 
ing of her decease. When sufficiently recovered 
to bear being questioned as to Madame Duval’s 
relations and position, she appeared confused ; 
said, after much pressing, that she Avas no rela- 
tion to the deceased ; that she belieA-ed Madame 
Duval had no relation Avith Avhoin she Avas on 
friendly terms, at least she had never heard her 
speak of any ; and that her own acquaintance 
with the deceased, though cordial, Avas A'ery re- 
cent. She could or Avould not give any cleAv to 
the Avriter of the letter signed Achille, and she 
herself quitted Munich that evening, leaving the 
impression that Madame Duval had been one 
of those ladies Avho, in adopting a course of life 
at variance Avith conventional regulations, are 
repudiated by their relations, and probably drop 
even their rightful names. 

Achille never appeared ; but a feAv days after 
a lawyer at Munich received a letter from anoth- 
er at Vienna requesting^ in compliance Avith a cli- 
ent’s instructions, the formal certificates of Louise 
DuA-al’s death. These Avere sent as directed, and 
nothing more about the ill-fated woman was 
heard of After the expiration of the time re- 
quired by laAv the seals were removed from the 
effects, which consisted of two malles and a dress- 
ing-case. But they only contained the articles 
appertaining to a lady’s Avardrobe or toilet. No 
letters — not even another note from Achille — no 
cleAv, in short, to the family or antecedents of 
the deceased. What then had become of these 
effects no one at the hotel could give a clear or 
satisfactory account. It AV’as said by the mistress 
of the hotel, rather sullenly, that they had, she 
supposed, been sold by her predecessor, and by or- 
der of the authorities, for the benefit of the poor. 

If the lady avIio had represented herself as 
Louise Duval’s acquaintance had giv’en her OAvn 
name, Avhich doubtless she did, no one recollect- 
ed it. It AA'as not entered in the books of the 
hotel, for she had not lodged there ; nor did it 
appear that she had alloAved time for formal ex- 
amination by the ciA'il authorities. In fact, it Avas 
clear that poor Louise DuA'al had been consider- 
ed as an adA'enturess by the hotel-keeper and the 
medical attendant at Munich ; and her death 
had excited so little interest that it Avas strange 
that eA-^en so many particulars respecting it could 
be gleaned. 

After a prolonged but fruitless stay at Munich, 
Graham and M. Renard repaired to Vienna; 
there, at least, Madame Marigny had given an 
address, and there she might be heard of 

At Vienna, hoAvever, no research aA’ailed to 
discover a trace of any such person, and in de- 
spair Graham returned to England in the Janu- 
ary of 1870. and left the further prosecution of 
his inquiries to M. Renard, Avho, though obliged 
to transfer himself to Paris for a time, promised 
that he Avould leave no stone unturned for the 
discovery of Madame Marigny; and Graham 
trusted \o that assurance Avhen M. Renard, re- 
jecting half of the large gratuity offered him, 
added, “./e suis Franpaise; this Avith me has 
ceased to be an affair of money ; it has become 
an affair that involves my amour projjreF 


126 


THE PARISIANS. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

If Graham Vane had been before caressed 
and courted for himself, he was more than ever 
appreciated by polite society, now that he added 
the positive repute of wealth to that of a prom- 
ising intellect. Fine ladies said that Graham 
Vane was a match for any girl. Eminent poli- 
ticians listened to him with a more attentive re- 
spect, and invited him to selector dinner-parties. 
His cousin the duke urged him to announce his 
candidature for the county, and purchase back, at 
least, the old Stanwi-schloss. But Graham ob- 
stinately refused to entertain either proposal, 
continued to live as economically as before in his 
old apartments, and bore with an astonishing 
meekness of resignation the unsolicited load of 
fashion heaped upon his shoulders. At heart 
he was restless and unhappy. The mission be- 
queathed to him by Richard King haunted his 
thoughts like a spectre not to be exorcised. Was 
his whole life to be passed in the weary sustain- 
ment of an imposture which in itself was gall and 
wormwood to a nature constitutionally frank and 
open ? Was he forever to appear a rich man and 
live as a poor one? Was he till his death-bed 
to be deemed a sordid miser whenever he refused 
a just claim on his supposed wealth, and to feel 
his ambition excluded from the objects it ear- 
nestly coveted, and which he was to appear too 
much of an Epicurean philosopher to prize ? 

More torturing than all else to the man’s in- 
nermost heart was the consciousness that he had 
not conquered, could not conquer, the yearning 
love with which Isaura had inspired him, and 
yet that against such love all his reasonings, all 
his prejudices, more stubbornly than ever were 
combined. In the French newspapers which he 
had glanced over while engaged in his research- 
es in Germany — nay, in German critical journals 
themselves — he had seen so many notices of the 
young author — highly eulogistic, it is true, but 
which to his peculiar notions were more offen- 
sive than if they had been sufficiently condemna- 
tory of her work to discourage her from its repe- 


tition — motives which seemed to him tlie supreme 
impertinences which no man likes exhibited to- 
ward the w'oman to whom he would render the 
chivalrous homage of respect. Evidently this 
girl had become as much public property as if 
she had gone on the stage. Minute details of 
her personal appearance — of the dimples on her 
cheek — of the whiteness of her arms — of her pe- 
culiar way of dressing her hair — anecdotes of her 
from childhood (of course invented, but how could 
Graham know that?) — of the reasons why she had 
adopted the profession of author instead of that 
of the singer — of the sensation she had created 
in certain salons (to Graham, who knew Paris 
so well, salons in which he would not have liked 
his wife to appear) — of the compliments paid to 
her by grands seigneurs noted for their liaisons 
with bailet-dancers, or by authors whose genius 
soared far beyond the Jiamtnantia mcenia of a 
world confined by respect for one’s neighbors’ 
landmarks — all this, which belongs to ground 
of personal gossip untouched by English critics 
of female writers — ground especially favored by 
Continental and, I am grieved to say, by Ameri- 
can journalists — all this, all this was to the sensi- 
tive Englishman much what the minute invento- 
ry of Egeria’s charms would have been to Numa 
Pompilius. The nymph, hallowed to him by se- 
cret devotion, was vulgarized by the noisy hands 
of the mob, and by the popular voices, which 
said, “We know more about Egeria than you 
do.” And when he returned to England, and 
met with old friends familiar to Parisian life, w ho 
said, “ Of course you have read the Cicogna’s 
roman. What do you think of it? Very fine 
writing, I dare say, but above me. I go in for 
L.es Mysteres de Paris or Monte Christo. But I 
even find George Sand a bore” — then as a critic 
Graham Vane fired up, extolled the roman he 
would have given his ears for Isaura never to 
have written, but retired from the contest mut- 
tering only, “ How' can I — I, Graham Vane — 
how can I be such an idiot — how can I in every 
hour of the twenty-four sigh to myself, ‘What 
are other women to me? — Isaura, Isaura!’” 


BOOK SEVENTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

It is the first week in the month of May, 1870. 
Celebrities are of rapid growth in the salons of 
Paris. Gustave Rameau has gained the position 
for which he sighed. The journal he edits has 
increased its hold on the public, and his share of 
the profits has been liberally augmented by the 
secret proprietor. Rameau is acknow-ledged as 
a power in literary circles. And as critics be- 
longing to tbe same clique praise each other in 
Paris, whatever they may do in communities 
more rigidly virtuous, his poetry has been de- 
clared by authorities in the press to be superior 
to that of Alfred de Musset in vigor, to that of 
Victor Hugo in refinement — neither of which 
assertions would much, perhaps, shock a culti- 
vated understanding. 

It is true that it (Gustave’s poetry) has not 
gained a wide audience among the public. But 


with regard to poetry nowadays, there are plen- 
ty of persons who say as Dr. Johnson said of 
the verse of Spratt, “I would rather praise it 
than read.” 

At all events, Ramean was courted in gay and 
brilliant circles, and, following the general ex- 
ample of French litterateurs in. fashion, lived 
well up to the income he received, had a de- 
lightful bachelor’s apartment, furnished with ar- 
tistic effect, spent largely on the adornment of 
his person, kept a coupe, and entertained profuse- 
ly at the Cafe Anglais and the Maison Doree. 
A reputation that inspired a graver and more 
unquiet interest had been created by the Vi- 
comte de Mauleon. Recent articles in the Sens 
Commun, written under the name of Pierre Fir- 
min, on the discussions on the vexed question of 
the Plebiscite had given umbrage to the govern- 
ment, and Rameau had received an intimation 
that he, as editor, w’as responsible for the com- 


127 


THE PAKISIANS. 


positions of the contributors to the journal he 
edited, and that though, so long as Pierre 
Firmin had kept his caustic spirit within proper 
bounds, the government had winked at the eva- 
sion of the law which required every political 
article in a journal to be signed by the real name 
of its author, it could do so no longer. “ Pierre 
Firmin” was apparently a nom de plume ; if not, 
his identity must be proved, or Kameau would 
pay the penalty which his contributor seemed 
bent on incurring. 

Kameau, much alarmed for the journal, that 
might be suspended, and for himself, who might be 
imprisoned, conveyed this information through 
the publisher to his correspondent Pierre Fir- 
min, and received the next day an article signed 
Victor de Mauleon, in which the writer pro- 
claimed himself to be one and the same with 
Pierre Firmin, and, taking a yet bolder tone 
than he had before assumed, dared the govern- 
ment to attempt legal measures against him. 
The government was prudent enough to disre- 
gard that haughty bravado, but Victor de Mau- 
leon rose at once into political importance. He 
had already in his real name and his quiet way 
established a popular and respectable place in 
Parisian society. But if this revelation created 
him enemies whom he had not before provoked, 
he was now sufficiently acquitted, by tacit con- 
sent, of the sins formerly laid to his charge, to 
disdain the assaults of party wrath. His old 
reputation for personal courage and skill in 
sword and pistol served, indeed, to protect him 
from such charges as a Parisian journalist does 
not reply to with his pen. If he created some 
enemies, he created many more friends, or, at 
least, partisans and admirers. He only needed 
fine and imprisonment to become a popular hero. 

A few days after he had thus proclaimed him- 
self, Victor de Mauleon, who had before kept 
aloof from Rameau, and from salons at which be 
was likely to meet that distinguished minslrel, 
solicited his personal acquaintance, and asked 
him to breakfast. 

Rameau joyfully went. He had a very nat- 
ural curiosity to see the contributor whose arti- 
cles had so mainly insured the sale of the Sens 
Comniun. 

In the dark-haired, keen-eyed, well-dressed, 
middle-aged man, with commanding port and 
courtly address, he failed to recognize any re- 
semblance to the flaxen-wigged, long-coated, be- 
spectacled, shambling sexagenarian whom he 
had known as Lebeau. Only now and then a 
tone of voice struck him as familiar, but he 
could not recollect where he had heard the voice 
it resembled. The thought of Lebeau did not 
occur to him ; if it had occurred it would only 
have struck him as a chance coincidence. Ra- 
meau, like most egotists, was rather a dull ob- 
server of men. His genius was not objective. 

“ I trust. Monsieur Rameau,” said the Vi- 
comte, as he and his guest were seated at the 
breakfast-table, “that you are not dissatisfied 
! with the remuneration your eminent services in 
the journal have received.” 

“The proprietor, whoever he be, has behaved 
most liberally,” answered Rameau. 

“I take that compliment to myself, cher con- 
frere, for though the expenses of starting the 
Sens Cotnmun and the caution money lodged 
were found by a friend of mine, that was as a 


loan, which I have long since repaid, and the 
property in the journal is now exclusively mine. 
I have to thank you not only for your own brill- 
iant contributions, but for those of the eol- 
leagues you secured. Monsieur Savarin’s piqu- 
ant criticisms were most valuable to us at 
starting. I regret to have lost his aid. But as 
he has set up a new journal of his own, even he. 
has not wit enough to spare for another. Apro- 
pos of our contributors, I shall ask you to present 
me to the fair author of The Artist's Daugh- 
ter. I am of too prosaic a nature to appreciate 
justly the merits of a roman ; but I have heard 
warm praise of this story from the young — they 
are the best judges of that kind of literature ; 
and I can at least understand the worth of a 
contributor who trebled the sale of our journal. 
It is a misfortune to us, indeed, that her work is 
completed, but I trust that the sum sent to her 
through our publisher suffices to tempt her to fa- 
vor us with another roman in series.” 

“Mademoiselle Cicogna,” said Rameau, with 
a somewhat sharper intonation of his sharp 
voice, “has accepted for the republication of 
her roman in a separate form terms which attest 
the worth of her genius, and has had offers 
from other journals for a serial tale of even 
higher amount than the sum so generously sent 
to her through your publisher.” 

“ Has she accepted them, Monsieur Rameau ? 
If so, tant pis pour vous. Pardon me, I mean 
that your salary suffers in proportion as the Sens 
Commun declines in sale.” 

“She has not accepted them. I advised her 
not to do so until she could compare them with 
those offered by the proprietor of the Sens Com- 
mun." 

“ And your advice guides her ? Ah ! cher con- 
frere, you are a happy man — you have influence 
over this young aspirant to the fame of a De 
Stael or a George Sand. ” 

“I flatter myself that I have some,” answered 
Rameau, smiling loftily as he helped himself to 
another tumbler of Volney wine — excellent, but 
rather heady ! 

“ So much the better. I leave you free to 
arrange terms with Mademoiselle Cicogna, high- 
er than she can obtain elsewhere, and kindly 
contrive my own personal introduction to her — 
you have breakfasted already ? — permit me to 
offer you a eigar — excuse me if I do not bear 
you company — I seldom smoke ; never of a morn- 
ing. Now to business, and the state of France. 
Take that easy-chair ; seat youi self comfortably. 
So ! Listen ! If ever Mephistopheles revisit the 
earth, how he will laugh at Universal Suffrage 
and Vote by Ballot in an old country like France, 
as things to be admired by educated men, and 
adopted by friends of genuine freedom!” 

“ I don’t understand you,” said Rameau. 

“In this respect, at least, let me hope that I 
can furnish you with understanding. 

“ The Emperor has resorted to a Plebiscite — 
viz., a Vote by Ballot and Universal SuflVage — 
as to certain popular changes which circum- 
stances compel him to substitute for his former 
personal rule. Is there a single intelligent Lib- 
eral who is not against that Plebiscite ? — is there 
any such who does not know that the appeal of 
the Emperor to Universal Suffrage and Vote by 
Ballot must result in a triumph over all the va- 
riations of free thought, by the unity which be- 


128 


THE PARISIANS. 


longs to Order, represented through an able man 
at the head of the state ? The multitude never 
comprehend principles ; principles are complex 
ideas ; they comprehend a simple idea, and tiie 
simplest idea is, a Name that rids their action of 
all responsibility to thought.’ 

“ Well, in Prance there are principles supera- 
bundant which you can pit against the principle 
of imperial rule. But tliere is not one Name 
you can pit against Napoleon 111 ; therefore I 
steer our little bark in the teeth of the popular 
gale when 1 denounce the Plebiscite, and Ae ! 
Sens Conmun will necessarily fall in sale — it is | 
beginning to fall already. We shall have the ; 
educated men with us, the rest against. In every 
country, even in China, where all ai’e highly ed- 
ucated, a few must be yet more highly educated 
than the many. Monsieur Rameau, I desire to 
overthrow the empire : in order to do that, it is 
not enough to have on my side the educated men, 

I must have the canaille — the canaille of Paris 
and of the manufacturing towns. But I use the 
canaille for my purpose — 1 don’t mean to en- 
throne it. You comprehend ? — the canaille qui- 
escent is simply mud at the bottom of a stream ; 
the canaille agitated is mud at the surface. 
But no man capable of three ideas builds the j 
palaces and senates of civilized society out of 
mud, be it at the top or the bottom of an ocean. 
Clan either you or I desire that the destinies of 
Prance shall be swayed by coxcombical artisans 
who think themselves superior to every man who 
writes grammar, and whose idea of a Common- 
wealth is the confiscation of private- proi)erty ?” 

Rameau, thoroughly puzzled by this discourse, 
bow'ed his head, and replied, whisperingly, “Pro- 
ceed. You are against the empire, yet against 
the populace ! What are you for? Not, surely, 
the Legitimists ? Are you Republican, Orlean- 
ist, or what ?” 

“Your questions are very pertinent,” answer- 
ed the Vicomte, courteously, “and my answer 
.shall be very frank. 1 am against absolute rule, 
whether under a Bonaparte or a Bourbon. I 
am for a free state, whether under a constitu- 
tional, hereditary sovereign like the English or 
Belgian, or whether. Republican in name, it be 
less democratic than Constitutional Monarchy in 
practice, like the American. But as a man in- 
terested in the fate of Le Sens Commun, 1 hold 
in profound disdain all crotchets for revolutioniz- 
ing the elements of Human Nature. Enough of 
this abstract talk. To the point. You are of 
course aw-are of the violent meetings held by the 
Socialists, nominally against the Plebiscite, real- j 
ly against the Emperor himself?” 

“ Yes, I know' at least that the working class 
are extremely discontented ; the numerous strikes 
last month were not on a mere question of w'ages 
— they were against the existing forms of soci- 
ety. And the articles by Pierre Pirmin which 
brought me into collision with the government, 
seemed to differ from what you now say. They 
approve those strikes ; they appeared to sympa- 
thize with the revolutionary meetings at Belle- 
ville and Montmartre.” 

“ Of course ! we use coarse tools for destroy- 
ing; we cast them aside for finer ones when we 
want to reconstruct. 

“ I attended one of those meetings last night. 
See, 1 have a ])ass for all such assemblies, signed 
by some dolt w'ho can not even spell the name 


he assumes — ‘ Pom-de-Tair. ’ A commissary of 
police sits yawning at the end of the orchestra, 
his secretary by his side, wdiile the orators stam- 
mer out fragments af would-be thunder-bolts. 
Commissary of police yawns more wearily than 
before ; secretary disdains to use his pen, seizes 
his penknife and pares his nails. Up rises a 
wild-haired, weak-limbed silhouette of a man, 
and affecting a solemnity of mien which might 
have become the virtuous Guizot, moves this res- 
olution : ‘The Prench people condemn Charles 
Louis Napoleon III. to the penalty of perpetual 
hard labor.’ Then up rises the commissary of 
police, and says, quietly, ‘ I declare this meeting 
at an end.’ 

“ Sensation among the audience — they gestic- 
ulate — they screech — they bellow — the commis- 
sary puts on his great-coat — the secretary gives 
a last touch to his nails and pockets his pen- 
knife — the audience disperse — the silhouette of 
a man effaces itself — all is over.” 

“You describe the scene most wittily,” said Ra- 
meau, laughing, but the laugh was constrained. 
A would-be cynic himself, there was a something 
grave and earnest in the real cynic that awed him. 

“What conclusion do you draw' from such a 
scene, cher poete ?" asked De Mauleon, fixing his 
keen quiet eyes on Rameau. 

“ What conclusions ? Well, that — that — ” 

“Yes, continue.” 

“ That the audience were sadly degenerated 
from the time w'hen Mirabeau said to a Master of 
the Ceremonies, ‘ We are here by the power of 
the Prench people, and nothing but the point of 
the bayonet shall expel u.s.’ ” 

“Spoken like a poet, a Piench poet. I sup- 
pose you admire M. Victor Hugo. Conceding 
that he would have employed a more soun<iing 
phraseology, comprising more absolute ignorance 
of men, times, and manners in unintelligible met- 
aphor and melodramatic braggadocio, your an- 
swer might have been his ; but pardon me if I 
add, it would not be that of Covwwn-Sense." 

“ Monsieur le Vicomte might rebuke me more 
politely,” said Rameau, coloring high. 

“ Accept my apologies ; I did not mean to re- 
buke, but to instruct. The times are not those 
of 1789. And Nature, ever repeating herself in 
the production of coxcombs and blockheads, 
never repeats herself in the production of Mir- 
abeaus. The empire is doomed — doomed, be- 
cause it is hostile to the free play of intellect. 
Any government that gives absolute preponder- 
ance to tbe many is hostile to intellect, for intel- 
lect is necessarily confined to the few. 

“Intellect is the most revengeful of all the 
elements of society. It cares not w'hat the ma- 
terials through which it insinuates or forces its 
way to its seat. 

“ I accept the aid of Pom-de- Pair. I do not 
demean myself to the extent of writing articles 
that may favor the principles of Pom-de-Tair, 
signed in the name of Victor de Mauleon or of 
Pierre Eirmin. 

“I will beg you, my dear editor, to obtain 
clever, smart writers who know nothing about 
Socialists and Internationalists, who therefore 
will not commit Le Sens Commnn by advocating 
the doctrines of those idiots, but w'ho w'ill flatter 
the vanity of the canaille — vaguely — write any 
stuff they please about the renow'u of Paris, ‘ the 
1 eye of the v/orld,’ ‘ the sun of the European sys- 


120 


THE PARISIANS. 


’tern,’ etc., of the artisans of Paris as supplying 
soul to that eye and fuel to that sun — any blague 
of that sort — genre Victor Hugo. But nothing 
definite against life and property, nothing tliat 
may not be considered hereafter as the harmless 
extravagance of a poetic enthusiasm. You might 
write such articles yourself.' In fine, I want to 
excite the multitude, and yet not to commit our 
journal to the contempt of the few. 

“Nothing is to be admitted that may bring 
the law upon us except it be signed by my name. 
There may be a moment in which it would be 
desirable for somebody to be sent to prison — in 
that case, 1 allow no substitute. I go myself. 

“ Now you have my most secret thoughts. I 
intrust them to your judgment with entire con- 
fidence. Monsieur Lebeau gave you a high char- 
acter, which you have hitherto deserved. By- 
the-way, have you seen any thing lately of that 
hotirgeois conspirator ?” 

“ No ; his professed business of letter- writer or 
agent is transferred to a clerk, who says M. Le- 
beau is abroad.” 

‘ ‘ Ah ! I don’t think that is true. I fancy I saw 
him the other evening gliding along the lanes of 
Belleville. He is too ca^n firmed a conspirator to 
be long out of Paris ; no place like Paris for 
seething brains.” 

“Have you known M. Lebeau long?” asked 
Rameau. 

“ Ay, many years. We are both Norman by 
birth, as you may perceive by something broad 
in our accent.” 

“ Ha I I knew your voice was familiar to me ; 
certainly it does remind me of Lebeau’s.” 

“ Normans are like each other in many things 
besides voice and accent — obstinacy, for instance, 
in clinging to ideas once formed; this makes 
them good friends and steadfast enemies. I w’ould 
advise no man to make an enemy of Lebeau. 

Au revoir, cher confrere. Do not forget to 
present me to Mademoiselle Cicogna.” 

» 

CHAPTER IL 

On leaving De Mauleon and regaining his 
coupe Rameau felt at once bewildered and hum- 
bled, for he was not prepared for the tone of care- 
less superiority which the Vicomte assumed over 
him. He had expected to be much com})liment- 
ed, and he comprehended vaguely that he had 
been somewhat snubbed. He was not only irri- 
tated — he was bewildered, for De Mauleon’s po- 
litical disquisitions did not leave any clear or def- 
inite idea on his mind as to the principles which, 
as editor of the Sens Cominun, he was to see ad- 
equately represented and carried out. In truth, 
Rameau was one of those numerous Parisian pol- 
iticians who have read little and reflected less on 
the government of men and states. Envy is said 
bv a great French writer to be the vice of democ- 
racies. Envy certainly had made Rameau a 
democrat. He could talk and write glibly enough 
upon the themes of equality and fraternity, and 
was so far an ultra democrat that he thought 
moderation the sign of a mediocre understanding. 

De Mauleon’s talk, therefore, terribly per- 
plexed him. Jt was unlike any thing he had 
heard before. Its revolutionary professions ac- 
companied with so much scorn for the multitude, 


and the things the multitude desired, were Greek 
to him. He was not shocked by the cynicism 
which placed wisdom in using the passions of 
mankind as tools for the interests of an individ- 
ual ; but he did not understand the frankness of 
its avowal. 

Nevertheless the man had dominated over and 
subdued him. Pie recognized the power of his 
contributor without clearly analyzing its nature — 
a power made up of large experience of life, of 
cold examination of doctrines that heated others 
— of patrician calm — of intellectual sneer — of 
collected confidence in self. 

Bosides, Rameau felt, with a nervous misgiv- 
ing, that in this man, who so boldly proclaimed 
his contempt for the instruments he used, he had 
found a master. De Mauleon, then, was sole 
proprietor of the journal from which Rameau 
drew his resources, might at any time dismiss 
him, might at any time involve the journal in 
penalties which, even if Rameau could escape in 
his official capacity as editor, still might stop the 
Sens Commun, and with it Rameau’s luxurious 
subsistence. 

Altogether the visit to De Mauleon had been 
any thing but a pleasant one. He sought, as the 
carriage rolled on, to turn his thoughts to more 
agreeable subjects, and the image of Isaiira rose 
before him. To do him justice, he had learned 
to love this girl as well as his nature would per- 
mit : he loved her with the whole strength of his 
imagination, and though his heart was somewhat 
cold, his imagination was very ardent. He loved 
her also with the whole strength of his A^anity, 
and vanity was even a more preponderate, organ 
of his system than imagination. To carry oft’ as 
his prize one who had already achieved celebrity, 
whose beauty and fascination of manner were 
yet more acknowledged than her genius, would 
certainly be a glorious triumph. 

Every Parisian of Rameau’s stamp looks for- 
ward in marriage to a brilliant salon. What sa- 
lon more brilliant than that which he and Isaura 
united coidd command ? He had long conquered 
his early impulse of envy at Isaura’s success — in 
fact, that success had become associated with bis 
own, and had contributed greatly to his enrich- 
ment. So that to other motives of love he might 
add the prudential one of interest. Rameau 
well knew that his own vein of composition, 
however lauded by the cliques, and however un- 
rivaled in his own eyes, was not one that brings 
much profit in the market. He compared him- 
self to those poets who are too far in advance of 
their time to be quite as sure of bread-and-cheese 
as they are of immortal fame. 

But" he regarded Isaura’s genius as of a lower 
order, and a thing in itself very marketable. 
Marry her, and the bread-and-cheese were so 
certain that he might elaborate as slowly as he 
pleased the verses destined to immortal fame. 
Then he should be independent of inferior creat- 
ures like Victor de Mauleon. But while Ra- 
meau convinced himself that he was i)assionately 
in love with Lsaura, he could not satisfy himself 
that she was in love with him. 

Though during the past year they had seen 
each other constantly, and their literary occupa- 
tions had produced many sympathies between 
them — though he had intimated that many of his 
most eloquent love-poems were inspired by her — 
though he had asserted in prose, very pretty prose 


130 


THE TARISIANS. 


too, that she was all that youthful poets dream 
of, yet she had hitherto treated such declarations 
with a playful laugh, accepting them as elegant 
compliments inspired by Parisian gallantry, and 
he felt an angry and sore foreboding that if he 
were to insist too seriously on the earnestness of 
their import, and ask her plainly to be his wife, 
her refusal would be certain, and his visits to her 
house might be interdicted. 

Still Isaura was unmarried — still she had re- 
fused offers of marriage from men higher placed 
than himself — still he divined no one whom she 
could prefer. And as he now leaned back in his 
coup€ he muttered to himself, “Oh, if I could 
but get rid of that little demon Julie, I would 
devote myself so completely to winning Isaura’s 
heart that I must succeed ! — but how to get rid 
of Julie? She so adores me, and is so bead- 
strong ! She is capable of going to Isaura — show- 
ing my letters — making such a scene !” 

Here he checked the carriage at a cafe on the 
Boulevard, descended, imbibed two glasses of 
absinthe, and then feeling much emboldened, re- 
mounted his coupe, and directed the driver to 
Isaura’s apartment. 


CHAPTER HI. 

Y Es, celebrities are of i-apid growth in the sa- 
lons of Paris. Par more solid than that of Ra- 
meau, far more brilliant than that of De Mau- 
leon, was the celebrity which Isaura had now ac- 
quired. She had been unable to retain the pretty 

suburban villa at A . The owner wanted to 

alter and enlarge it for his own residence, and she 
had been persuaded by Signora Venosta, who 
was always sighing for fresh salons to conquer, 
to remove (toward the close of the previous year) 
to apartments in the centre of the Parisian beau 
monde. Without formally professing to receive, 
on one evening in the week her salon was open 
to those who had eagerly sought her acquaintance 
— comprising many stars in the world of fashion 
as well as those in the world of art and letters. 
And as she had now wholly abandoned the idea 
of the profession for which her voice had been cul- 
tivated, she no longer shrunk from the exercise 
of her surpassing gift of song for the delight of 
private friends. Her physician had withdrawn 
the interdict on such exercise. 

His skill, aided by the rich vitality of her con- 
stitution, had triumphed over all tendencies to 
the malady for which he had been consulted. 
To hear Isaura Cicogna sing in her own house 
was a privilege sought and prized by many who 
never read a word of her literary compositions. 
A good critic of a book is rare, but good judges 
of a voice are numberless. Adding this attrac- 
tion of song to her youth, her beauty, her frank 
powers of converse — an innocent sweetness of 
manner free from all conventional affectation — 
and to the fresh novelty of a genius which in- 
spired the young with enthusiasm and beguiled 
the old to indulgence, it was no wonder that 
Isaura became a celebrity at Paris. 

Perhaps it was a wonder that her head was 
not turned by the adulation that surrounded 
her. But I believe, be it said with diffidence, 
that a woman of mind so superior that the mind , 
never pretends to efface the heart is less intox- ; 


icated with flattery than a man equally exposed 
to it. 

It is the strength of her heart that keeps her 
head sober. Isaura had never yet overcome her 
first romance of love ; as yet, amidst all her tri- 
umphs, there was not a day in which her thoughts 
did not wistfully, mournfully, fly back to those 
blessed moments in which she felt her cheek col- 
or before a look, her heart beat at the sound of 
a footfall. Perhaps if there had been the cus- 
tomary finis to this young romance — the lover’s 
deliberate renunciation, his formal farewell^ — the 
girl’s pride would, ere this, have conquered her 
affection — possibly — who knows ? — replaced it. 

But, reader, be you male or female, have you 
ever known this sore trial of affection and pride, 
that from some cause or other, to you myste- 
rious, the dear intercourse to which you had ac- 
customed the secret life of your life abruptly 
ceases ; you know that a something has come be- 
tween you and the beloved which. you can not 
distinguish, can not measure, can not guess, and 
therefore can not surmount; and you say to your- 
self at the dead of solitary night, “ Oh for an ex- 
planation ! Oh for one meeting more ! All might 
be so easily set right ; or if not, I should know 
the worst, and, knowing it, could conquer!” 

This trial was Isaura’s. There had been no ex- 
planation, no last farewell between her and Gra- 
ham. She divined — no woman lightly makes a 
mistake there — that he loved her. She knew that 
this dread something had intervened between her 
and him when he took leave of her before others 
so many months ago ; that this dread something 
still continued. What was it? She was certain 
that it would vanish, could they but once meet 
again, and not before others. Oh for such a 
meeting ! 

She could not herself destroy hope. She could 
not marry another. She would have no heart to 
give to another while he was free, while in doubt 
if his heart was still her own. And thus her pride 
did not help her to conquer her affection. 

Of Graham Vane she heard occasionally. He 
had ceased to correspond with Savarin ; but 
among those who most frequented her salon were 
the Morleys. Americans so well educated and 
so well placed as the Morleys knew something 
about every Englishman of the social station of 
Graham Vane. Isaura learned from them that 
Graham, after a tour on the Continent, had re- 
turned to England at the commencement of the 
year, had been invited to stand for Parliament, 
had refused, that his name was in the list pub- 
lished by the Morning Post of the elite whose 
arrivals in London or whose presence at dinner- 
tables is recorded as an event. That the Athe- 
noeuni had mentioned a rumor that Graham Vane 
was the author of a political pamphlet which, 
published anonymously, had made no inconsid- 
erable sensation. Isaura sent to England for 
that pamphlet : the subject was somewhat dry, 
and the style, though clear and vigorous, was 
scarcely of the elo(|uence which wins the admira- 
tion of women ; and yet she learned every word 
of it by heart. 

We know how little she dreamed that the ce- 
lebrity which she hailed as an approach to him 
was daily making her more remote. The sweet 
labors she undertook for that celebrity continued 
I to be sweetened yet more by secret association 
; with the absent one. How many of the passages 


THE PARISIANS. 


131 


most admired could never have been written had 
he been never known ! 

And she blessed those labors the more that 
they upheld her from the absolute feebleness of 
sickened reverie, beguiled her from the gnawing 
torture of unsatisfied conjecture. She did com- 
ply with Madame de Grantmesnil’s command — 
did pass from the dusty beaten road of life into 
green fields and along flowery river-banks, and 
did enjoy that ideal by- world. 

But still the one image which reigned over her 
human heart moved beside her in the gardens of 
fairy-land. 


CHAPTER IV. 

Is AURA was seated in her pretty salon, with the 
Venosta, M. Savarin,.the Morleys, and the finan- 
cier Louvier, when Rameau was announced. 

“ Ha !” cried Savarin, “ we were just discuss- 
ing a matter which nearly concerns you, cher 
poete. I have not seen you since the announce- 
ment that Pierre Firmin is no other than Victor 
de Mauleon. Ma foi, that worthy seems likely to 
be as dangerous with his pen as he was once with 
his sword. The article in which he revealed 
himself makes a sharp lunge on the government. 
Take care of yourself. When hawks and night- 
ingales fly together the hawk may escape, and 
the nightingale complain of the barbarity of kings, 
in a cage: ‘Flebiliter gemens Infelix avis.’” 

“He is not fit to conduct a journal,” replied 
Rameau, magniloquently, “ who will not brave 
a danger for his body in defense of the right to 
infinity for his thought.” 

“ Bravo,” said Mrs. Morley, clapping her 
pretty hands. ‘ ‘ That speech reminds me of 
home. The French are very much like the Amer- 
icans in their style of oratory.” 

“So,” said Louvier, “my old friend the Vi- 
comte has come out as a writer, a politician, a 
philosopher ; I feel hurt that he kept this secret 
from me despite our intimacy. I suppose you 
knew it from the first, M. Rameau ?” 

“No; I was as much taken by surprise as the 
rest of the world. You have long known M. de 
Mauleon ?” 

“ Yes, I may say we began life together — that 
is, much at the same time.” 

“ What is he like in appearance ?” asked Mrs. 
Morley. 

“ The ladies thought him very handsome when 
he was young,” replied Louvier. “ He is still a 
fine-looking man, about my height.” 

“I should like to know him!” cried Mrs. 
Morley, “ if only to tease that husband of mine. 
He refuses me the dearest of woman’s rights— I 
can’t make him jealous.” 

“ You may have the opportunity of knowing 
tliis ci-devant Lovelace very soon,” said Rameau, 
“ for he has begged me to present him to Made- 
moiselle Cicogna, and I will ask her permission 
to do so on Thursday evening when she receives.” 

Isaura, who had hitherto attended very list- 
lessly to the conversation, bowed assent. “ Any 
friend of yours will be welcome. But I own the 
articles signed in the name of Pierre Firmin do 
not prepossess me in favor of their author.” 

“ Why so ?” asked Louvier. “ Surely you are 
not an Imperialist ?” 

“Nay, I do not pretend to be a politician at 


all, but there is something in the writing of Pierre 
Firmin that pains and chills me.” 

“Yet the secret of its popularity,” said Sava- 
rin, “ is that it says what every one says — only 
better.” 

“ I see now that it is exactly that which dis- 
pleases me ; it is the Paris talk condensed into 
epigram : the graver it is, the less it elevates ; 
the lighter it is, the more it saddens.” 

“ That is meant to hit me,” said Savarin, with 
his sunny laugh, “me whom you call cynical.” 

“ No, dear M. Savarin, for above all your cyn- 
icism is genuine gayety, and below it solid kind- 
ness. You have that which I do not find in M. 
de Mauleon’s writing, nor often in the talk of 
the salons — you have youthfulness.” 

“ Youthfulness at sixty — flatterer !” 

“ Genius does not count its years by the al- 
manac,” said Mrs. Morley. “ I know what Isau- 
ra means — she is quite right; there is a breath 
of winter in M. de Mauleon’s style, and an odor 
of fallen leaves. Not that his diction wants vig- 
or; on the contrary, it is crisp with hoar-frost. 
But the sentiments conveyed by the diction are 
those of a nature sere and withered. And it is 
in this combination of brisk words and decayed 
feelings that his writing represents the talk and 
mind of Pai-is. He and Paiis are always fault- 
finding : fault-finding is the attribute of old age.” 

Colonel Morley looked round with pride, as 
much as to say, “ Clever talker, my wife.” 

Savarin understood that look, and replied to it 
courteously. “ Madame has a gift of expression 
which Emile de Girardin can scarcely surpass. 
But when she blames us for fault-finding, can 
she expect the fiiends of liberty to praise the 
present style of things ?” 

“ I should be obliged to the friends of liberty,” 
said the Colonel, dryly, “to tell me how that 
state of things is to be mended. I find no en- 
thusiasm for the Orleanists, none for a republic ; 
people sneer at religion ; no belief in a cause, no 
adherence to an opinion. But the worst of it is 
that, like all people who are blasts, the Parisians 
are eager for strange excitement, and ready to 
listen to any oracle who promises a relief from 
indifferentism. Tins it is which makes the Press 
more dangerous in Fi'ance than it is in any other 
country. Elsewhere the Press sometimes leads, 
sometimes follows, public opinion. Here there 
is no public opinion to consult, and instead ot 
opinion the Press represents passion.” 

“My dear Colonel Morley,” said Savarin, “ I 
hear you very, often say that a Frenchman can 
not understand America. Permit me to observe 
that an American can not understand France — 
or at least Paris. — Apropos of Paris, that is a 
large speculation of yours, Louvier, in the new 
suburb. ” 

“ And a very sound one ; I advise you to in- 
vest in it. I can secure you at present five per 
cent, on the rental; that is nothing; the houses 
will be worth double when the ‘ Rue de Louvier’ 
is completed.” 

“Alas! I have no money; my new journal 
absorbs all my capital.” 

“ Shall I transfer the moneys I hold for you, 
signorina ; and add to them whatever you may 
have made by your delightful roman^ as yet lying 
idle, to this investment? I can not say more in 
its favor than this; I have embarked a very 
large portion of my capital in the Rue de Lou- 


132 


THE PARISIANS. 


vier, and I flatter myself that I am not one of 
tliose men who persuade tlieir friends to do a 
foolish thing by setting them the example.” 

“ Whatever your advice on such a subject,” 
said Isaura, graciously, “it is sure to be as wise 
as it is kind.” 

“You consent, then?” 

“ Certainly.” 

Here the Venosta, who had been listening with 
great attention to Louvier’s commendation of this 
investment, drew him aside, and whispered in his 
ear, “ I suppose, M. Louvier, that one can’t put 
a little money — a very little money — poco-poco- 
pocolino, into your street.” 

“ Into my street ! Ah, I understand — into the 
speculation of tlie Rue de Louvier — certainly you 
can ! Arrangements are made on purpose to suit 
the convenience of the smallest capitalists — from 
500 francs upward.” 

“And you feel quite sure that we shall dou- 
ble our money when the street is completed ? I 
should not like to have my brains in my heels.” * 

“More than double it, I hope — long before 
the street is completed. ” 

“I have saved a little money — very little. I 
have no relations, and I mean to leave it all to 
the signorina; and if it could be doubled, why, 
there would be twice as much to leave her. ” 

“ So there would,” said Louvier. “ Y'ou can’t 
do better than put it all into the Rue de liOuvier. 
I will send you the necessary papers to-nrorrow, 
when I send hers to the signorina.” 

Louvier here turned to address himself to Col- 
onel Morley, but finding that degenerate son of 
America indisposed to get cent per cent, for his 
money when ottered by a Parisian, he very soon 
took his leave. The other visitors followed his 
example, except Rameau, who was left alone 
with the Venosta and Isaura. The former had 
no liking for Rameau, who showed her none of 
the attentions her innocent vanity demanded, 
and she soon took herself off to her own room to 
calculate the amount of her savings, and dream 
of the Rue de Louvier and “golden joys.” 

Rameau, approaching his chair to Isaura’s, then 
commenced conversation, dryly enough, upon pe- 
cuniary matters ; acquitting himself of the mis- 
sion w'ith which De Mauleon had charged him, 
the request for a new work from her pen for the 
Sens Commun^ and the terms that ought to be 
asked for compliance. The young lady-author 
shrank from this talk. Her private income, 
though modest, sufficed for her wants, and she 
felt a sensitive shame in the sale of her thoughts 
and fancies. 

Putting hurriedly aside the mercantile aspect 
of the question, she said that she had no other 
work in her mind at present — that whatever her 
vein of invention might be, it flowed at its own 
will and could not be commanded. 

“ Nay,” said Rameau, “ this is not true. We 
fancy, in our hours of indolence, that we must 
wait for inspiration, but once force ourselves to 
work, and ideas spring forth at the wave of the 
pen. You may believe me here. I speak from 
experience — 1, compelled to work, and in modes 
not to my taste : I do my task I know not how. 
1 rub the lamp, ‘ the genius comes.’ ” 

“ I have read in some English author that 


• “ Avere il cer cello nella calcagna" — viz., to act with- 
out prudent reflection. , . ' 


motive power is necessary to continued labor: 
you have motive power, I have none.” 

“ I do not quite understand you.” 

“I mean that a strong ruling motive is re- 
quired to persist in any regular course of action 
that needs effort : the motive with the majority 
of men is the need of subsistence ; with a large 
number (as in trades or professions), not actu- 
ally want, but a desire of gain, and perhaps of 
distinction in their calling : the desire of profes- 
sional distinction expands into the longings for 
more comprehensive ttime, more exalted honors, 
with the few who become great writers, soldiers, 
statesmen, orators.” 

“ And do you mean to say you have no such 
motive ?” 

“ None in the sting of want, none in the desire 
of gain.” 

“ But fame ?” 

“ Alas ! I thought so once. I kno\v not now 
— I begin to doubt if fame should be sought by 
women ?” This was said very dejectedly. 

“Tut, dearest signorina, what gadfly has 
stung you ? Your doubt is a weakness unwor- 
thy of your intellect; aiid even were it not, 

I genius is destiny, and will be obeyed : you must 
write, despite yourself, and your writing must 
bring fame, whether you wish it or not.” 

Isaura was silent, her head drooped on her 
breast — there were tears in her downcast eyes. 

Rameau took her hand, which she yielded to 
him passively, and clasping it in both his own, 
he rushed on impulsively. 

“ Oh, I know what these misgivings are when 
we feel ourselves solitary, unloved : how often 
have they been mine ! But how different would 
labor be if shared and sympathized with by a con- 
genial mind, by a heart that beats in unison with 
one’s own !” 

Isaura’s breast heaved beneath her robe; she 
sighed softly. 

“And then how sweet the fame of which the 
one we love is proud — how trifling becopies the 
pang of some malignant depreciation, which a 
word from the beloved one can soothe ! Oh, sign- 
orina, oh, Isaura, are we not made for each oth- 
er ? Kindred pursuit.s, hopes, and fears in com- 
mon; the same race to run, the same goal to 
win ? I need a moti- e stronger than I have yet 
known for the persevering energy that insures 
success : supply to me that motive. Let me 
think that whatever I win in the strife of the 
world is a tribute to Isaura. No, do not seek to 
withdraw this hand ; let me claim it as mine for 
life. I love you as man never loved before — do 
not reject my love. ” 

They say the woman who hesitates is lost. 
Isaura hesitated, but was not yet lost. The 
words she listened to moved her deeply. Otters 
of marriage she had already received — one from 
a rich middle-aged noble, a devoted musical vir- 
tuoso ; one from a young avocat fresli from the 
provinces, and somewhat calculating on her dot ; 
one from a timid but enthusiastic admirer of her 
genius and her beauty, himself rich, handsome, 
of good birth, but with shy manners and falter- 
ing tongue. 

But these had made their proposals with the 
formal respect habitual to French decorum in 
matrimonial proposals. Words so eloquently im- 
passioned as Gustave Rameau’s had never before 
thrilled her ears. Yes, she was deeply moved; 


133 


THE PARISIANS. 


and yet, by that very emotion, she knew that it I 
was not to the love of this wooer that her heart 
responded. 

There is a circumstance in the history of court- 
ship familiar to the experience of many women, 
that while the suitor is pleading his cause, his 
language may touch every fibre in the heart of 
his listener, yet substitute, as it were, another 
presence for his own. She may he saying to her- 
self, “Oh that another had said those words!” 
and be dreaming of the other, while she hears 
the one. 

Thus it was now with Isaura, and not till Ra- 
meau’s voice had ceased did that dream pass 
away, and with a slight shiver she turned her face 
toward the wooer, sadly and pityingly. 

“It can not be,” she said, in a low whisper; 

“ I were not worthy of your love could I accept 
it. Forget that you have so spoken ; let me still 
be a friend admiring your genius, interested in 
your career. I can not be more. Forgive me 
if I unconsciously led you to think I could, I am 
so grieved to pain you.” 

“Am I to understand,” said Rameau, coldly, 
for his amour propre was resentful, “ that the 
proposals of another have been more fortunate 
than mine?” Aiid he named the youngest and 
comeliest of those whom she had rejected. 

“ Certainly not,” said Isaura. 

Rameau rose and went to the window, turning 
his face from her. In reality, he was striving to 
collect his thoughts and decide on the course it 
were most prudent for him now to pursue. The 
fumes of the absinthe which had, despite his pre- 
vious forebodings, emboldened him to hazard his 
avowal, had now subsided into the languid re- 
action which is generally consecpient on that 
treacherous stimulus, a reaction not unfavorable 
to passionless reflection. He knew that if he 
said he could not conquer his love, he would 
still cling to hope, and trust to perseverance 
and time, he should compel Isaura to forbid his 
visits, and break off their familiar intercourse. 
This would be fatal to the chance of yet winning 
her, and would also be of serious disadvantage 
to his more worldly interests. Her literary aid 
might become essential to the journal on which 
his fortunes depended, and, at all events, in her 
conversation, in her encouragement, in her sym- 
pathy with the pains and joys of his career, lie 
felt a support, a comfort, nay, an inspiration. 
For the spontaneous gush of her fresh thoughts 
and fancies served to recruit his own jaded ideas, 
and enlarge his own stinted range of invention. 
No, he could not commit himself to the risk of 
banishment from Isaura. 

And mingled with meaner motives for discre- 
tion, there was one of which he was but vaguely 
conscious, purer and nobler. In the society of 
this girl, in whom whatever was strong and high 
in mental organization became so sweetened into 
feminine grace by gentleness of temper and kind- 
liness of disposition, Rameau felt himself a bet- 
ter man. The virgin-like dignity with which 
she moved, so untainted by a breath of scandal, 
amidst salons in which the envy of virtues doubt- 
ed sought to bring innocence itself into doubt, 
warmed into a genuine reverence the cynicism 
of his professed creed. 

While with her, while under her chastening in- 
fluence, he was sensible of a poetry infused with- 
in him far more true to the (kimcenic than all he 


I had elaborated into verse. In these moments he 
was ashamed of the vices he had courted as dis- 
tractions. He imagined that, with her all his 
own, it would be easy to reform. 

No ; to withdraw wholly from Isaura was to 
renounce his sole chance of redemption. 

While these thoughts, which it takes so long 
to detail, passed rapidly through his brain, he 
felt a soft touch on his arm, and turning his 
face slowly, encountered the tender, compassion- 
ate eyes of Isaura. 

“Be consoled, dear friend,” she said, with a 
smile, half cheering, half mournful. “ Perhaps 
for all true artists the solitary lot is the best.” 

“I will try to think so,” answered Rameau; 
“ and meanwhile I thank you with a full heart 
for the sweetness with which you have checked 
my presumption — the presumption shall not he 
rejieated. Gratefully I accept the friendship you 
deign to tender me. You bid me forget the 
words I uttered. Promise in turn that you will 
forget them — or at least consider them withdrawn. 
You will receive me still as friend?” 

• “As friend, surely; yes. Do we not both 
need friends ?” She held out her hand as she 
spoke ; he bent over it, kissed it with respect, 
and the interview thus closed. 


CHAPTER V. 

It was late in the evening of that day when a 
man who had the appearance of a decent bour- 
geois, in the lower grades of that comprehensive 
class, entered one of the streets in the Faubourg 
Montmartre, tenanted chiefly by artisans. He 
paused at the open doorway of a tall narrow 
house, and drew back as he heard footsteps de- 
scending a very gloomy staircase. 

The light from a gas-lamp on the street fell full 
on the face of the person thus quitting the house 
— the face of a young and handsome man, dressed 
with the quiet elegance which betokened one of 
higher rank or fashion than that neighborhood 
was habituated to find among its visitors. The 
first comer retreated promptly into the shade, 
and, as by sudden impulse, drew his hat low 
down over his eyes. 

The other man did not, however, observe him, 
went his way with quick step along the street, and 
entered another house some yards distant. 

“What can that pious Bourbonite do here?’ 
muttered the first comer. “Can he be a con- 
spirator? Diable! ’tis as dark as Erebus ot. 
that staircase.” 

Taking cautious hold of the baluster, the man 
now ascended the stairs.' On the landing of the 
first floor there was a gas-lamp which threw up- 
ward a faint ray that finally died at the third 
story. But at that third story the man’s journey 
ended ; he pulled a bell at the door to the right, 
and in another moment or so the door was open- 
ed by a young woman of twenty-eight or thirty 
dressed very simply, but with a certain neatness 
not often seen in the wives of artisans iti the 
Faubourg Montmartre. Her face, wliich, though 
pale and delicate, retained much of the beauty of 
vouth, became clouded as she recognized the vis- 
itor ; evidently the visit was not welcome to her. 

“Monsieur Lebeau again!” she exclaimed, 
shrinking back. 


134 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ At your semce, chere dame. The goodman 
is of course at home ? Ah, I catch sight of him 
and sliding by the woman, M. Lebeau passed the 
narrow lobby in which she stood, through the 
open door conducting into the room in which 
Armand Monnier was seated, his chin propped 
on his hand, his elbow resting on a table, looking 
abstractedly into space. In a comer of the room 
two small children were playing languidly with 
a set of bone tablets inscribed with the letters of 
the alphabet. But whatever the children were 
doing with the alphabet, they were certainly not 
learning to read from it. 

The room was of fair size and height, and by 
no means barely or shabbily furnished. There 
was a pretty clock on the mantel-piece. On the 
wall were hung designs for the decoration of 
apartments, and shelves on which were ranged a 
few books. 

The window was open, and on the sill were 
placed flower-pots ; you could scent the odor 
they wafted into the room. 

Altogether it was an apartment suited to a 
skilled artisan earning high wages. From the» 
room we are now in branched on one side a 
small but commodious kitchen ; on the other side, 
on which the door was screened by a portiere, 
with a border prettily worked by female hands — 
some years ago, for it was faded now — was a 
bedroom, communicating with one of less size 
in which the children slept. We do not enter 
those additional rooms, but it may be well here 
to mention them as indications of the comforta- 
ble state of an intelligent, skilled artisan of Paris, 
who thinks he can better that state by some rev- 
olution which may ruin his employer. 

Monnier started up at the entrance of Lebeau, 
and his face showed that he did not share the 
dislike to the visit which that of the female part- 
ner of his life had evinced. On the contrary, 
his smile was cordial, and there was a hearty 
ring in the voice which cried out, 

“ I am glad to see you. Something to do, eh ?” 

“Always ready to work for liberty, mon brave. ” 

“ I hope so. What’s in the wind now ?” 

“ Oh, Armand, be prudent — be prudent,” cried 
the woman, piteously. “ Do not lead him into 
further mischief. Monsieur Lebeau.” As she fal- 
tered forth the last words, she bowed her head 
over the two little ones, and her voice died in sobs. 

“Monnier,” said Lebeau, gravely, “ madame 
is right. I ought not to lead you into further 
mischief. There are three in the room who have 
better claims on you than — ” 

‘ ‘ The cause of the millions,” interrupted Mon- 
nier. 

“No.” 

lie approached the woman, and took up one 
of the children very tenderly, stroking back its 
curls and kissing the face, which, if before sur- 
]>rised and saddened by the mother’s sob, now 
smiled gayly under the father’s kiss. 

“Canst thou doubt, my Ileloise,” said the ar- 
tisan, mildly, “ that, whatever I do, thou and 
these are not uppermost in my thoughts ? I act 
for thine interest and theirs — the world as it ex- 
ists is the foe of you three. The world I would 
replace it by will be more friendly.” 

The poor woman made no reply, but as he 
drew her toward him, she leaned her head upon 
his breast and wept quietly. Monnier led her 
thus from the room, whispering words of sooth- 


ing. The childien followed the parents into the 
adjoining chamber. In a few minutes Monnier 
returned, shutting the door behind him and draw- 
ing the portiere close. 

“You will excuse me, citizen, and my poor 
wife — wife she is to me and to all who visit here, 
though the law says she is not.” 

“I respect madame the more for her dislike 
to myself,” said Lebeau, with a somewhat mel- 
ancholy smile. 

“ Not dislike to you personally, citizen, but 
dislike to the business which she connects with 
your visits, and she is more than usually agitated 
on that subject this evening, because, just before 
you came, another visitor had produced a great 
effect on her feelings — poor dear Ileloise. ” 

“Indeed! How?” 

“Well, I was employed in the winter in re- 
decorating the salon and boudoir of Madame de 
Vandemar ; her son, M. Raoul, took great in- 
terest in superintending the details. He would 
sometimes talk to me very civilly, not only on my 
work, but on other matters. It seems that ma- 
dame now wants something done to the salle-a- 
manger, and asked old Gerard — my late master, 
you know — to send me. Of course he said that 
was impossible — for, though I was satisfied with 
my own wages, I had induced his other men to 
strike, and was one of the ringleaders in the re- 
cent strike of artisans in general, a dangerous 
man, and he would have nothing more to do with 
me. So M. Raoul came to see and talk with me 
— scarce gone before you rang at the bell — you 
might have almost met him on the stairs.” 

“ I saw a beau monsieur come out of the house. 
And so his talk has affected madame.” 

“ Very much ; it was quite brother-like. He 
is one of the religious set, and they always get 
at the weak side of the soft sex.” 

“ Ay,” said Lebeau, thoughtfully, “ if religion 
were banished from the laws of men, it would 
still find a refuge in the hearts of women. But 
Raoul de Vandemar did not presume to preach 
to madame upon the sin of loving you and your 
children ?” 

“I should like to have heard him preach to 
her,” cried Monnier, fiercely. “No; he only 
tried to reason with me about matters he could 
not understand.” 

“ Strikes ?” 

“Well, not exactly strikes — ^he did not con- 
tend that we workmen had not full right to com- 
bine and to strike for obtaining fairer money’s 
worth for our work ; but he tried to persuade 
me that where, as in my case, it was not a mat- 
ter of wages, but of political principle — of war 
against capitalists — I could but injure myself and 
mislead others. He wanted to reconcile me to 
old Gerard, or to let him find me employment 
elsewhere ; and when I told him that my honor 
forbade me to make terms for myself till those 
with whom I was joined were satisfied, he said, 

‘ But if this lasts much longer, your children 
will not look so rosy ;’ then poor Heloise began 
to wring her hands and cry, and he took me 
aside and wanted to press mqney on me as a 
loan. He spoke so kindly that I could not be 
angry ; but when he found I would take noth- 
ing, he asked me about some families in the 
street of whom he had a list, and who, he was 
informed, were in great distress. That is true; 
I am feeding some of them myself out of my sav- 







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135 


THE PARISIANS. 


ings. You see, this young monsieur belongs to 
a society of men, many as young as he is, which 
visits the poor and dispenses charity. I did not 
feel I had a right to refuse aid for others, and I 
told him where his money would be best spent. 
I suppose he went there when he left me.” 

“I know the society you mean, that of St. 
Fran 9 ois de Sales. It comprises some of the 
most ancient of that old noblesse to which the 
ouvriers in the great Revolution were so remorse- 
less.” 

“We ouvriers are wiser now ; we see that in 
assailing them, we gave ourselves worse tyrants 
in the new aristocracy of the capitalists. Our 
quarrel now is that of artisans against employers. ” 

“ Of course I am aware of that. But to leave 
general politics, tell me frankly. How has the 
strike affected you as yet ? — I mean in purse. 
Can you stand its pressure? If not, you are 
above the false pride of not taking help from me, 
a fellow-conspirator, though you were justified 
in refusing it when offered by Raoul de Vande- 
mar, the servant of the Church.” 

“Pardon, I refuse aid from any one, except 
for the common cause. But do not fear for me ; 
I am not pinched as yet. I have had high wages 
for some years, and since I and Heloise came to- 
gether I have not wasted a sou out-of-doors, ex- 
cept in the way of public duty, such as making 
converts at the Jean Jacques and elsewhere : a 
glass of beer and a pipe don’t cost much. And 
Heloise is such a housewife, so thrifty, scolds me 
if I buy her a ribbon, poor love ! No wonder that 
I would pull down a society that dares to scoff 
at her — dares to say she is not my wife, and her 
children are base-born. No, I have some savings 
left yet. War to society, war to the knife !” 

“Monnier,” said Lebeau, in a voice that 
evinced emotion, “ listen to me : I have received 
injuries from society which, when they were fresh, 
half maddened me — that is twenty years ago. I 
would then have thrown myself into any plot 
against society that proffered revenge; but so- 
ciety, my friend, is a wall of very strong masonry, 
as it now stands ; it may be sapped in the course 
of a thousand years, but stormed in a day — no. 
You dash your head against it — you scatter your 
brains, and you dislodge a stone. Society smiles 
in scorn, effaces the stain, and replaces the stone. 
I no longer war against society. I do war against 
a system in that society which is hostile to me — 
systems in France are easily overthrown. I say 
this because I want to use you, and I do not 
want to deceive#” 

“ Deceive me, bah ! You are an honest man,” 
cried Monnier; and he seized Lebeau’s hand, 
and shook it with warmth and vigor. “ But for 
you I should have been a mere grumbler. No 
doubt I should have cried out where the shoe 
pinched, and railed against law's that vex me ; 
but from the moment you first talked to me I 
became a new' man. You taught me to act. 
as Rousseau and Madame de Grantmesnil had 
taught me to think and to feel. There is my 
brother, a grumbler too, but professes to have a 
wiser head than mine. He is always warning 
me against you, against joining a strike, against 
doing any thing to endanger my skin. I always 
went by his advice till you taught me that it is 
well enough for women to talk and complain ; 
men should dare and do.” 

“Nevertheless,” said Lebeau, “your brother 


is a safer counselor to a pere de famille than I. 
I repeat what I have so often said before: I de- 
sire, and I resolve, that the empire of M. Bona- 
parte shall be overthrown. I see many concur- 
rent circumstances to render that desire and re- 
solve of practicable fulfillment. You desire and 
resolve the same thing. Up to that point we can 
work together. I have encouraged your action 
only so far as it served my design ; but I separate 
from you the moment you would ask me to aid 
your design in the hazard of experiments which 
the world has never yet favored, and, trust me, 
Monnier, the world never will favor.” 

“That remains to be seen,” said Monnier, 
with compressed, obstinate lips. “Forgive me, 
but you are not young; you belong to an old 
school.” 

“ Poor young man !” said Lebeau, readjusting 
his spectacles, “I recognize in you the genius 
of Paris, be the genius good or evil. Paris is 
never w'arned by experience. Be it so. I w'ant 
you so much, your enthusiasm is so fiery, that I 
can concede no more to the mere sentiment 
which makes me say to myself, ‘ It is a shame 
to use this great-hearted, wrong-headed creatui'e 
for my personal ends.’ I come at once to the 
point — that is, the matter on which I seek you 
this evening. At my suggestion, you have been 
a ringleader in strikes which have terribly shak- 
en the imperial system, more than its ministers 
deem. Now I want a man like you to assist in 
a bold demonstration against the imperial resort 
to a rural priest-ridden suffrage, on the part of 
the enlightened working class of Paris.” 

“Good!” said Monnier. 

“In a day or two the result of the Plebiscite 
will be know'n. The result of universal suffrage 
will be enormously in favor of the desire ex- 
pressed by one man.” 

“I don’t believe it,” said Monnier, stoutly. 

‘ ‘ France can not be so hoodw inked by the priests. ” 

“Take what I say for granted,” resumed Le- 
beau, calmly. “ On the 8th of this month we 
shall know the amount of the majority — some 
millions of French votes. I w'ant Paris to sep- 
arate itself from France, and declare against those 
blundering millions. I w ant an emeute, or rather 
a menacing demonstration — not a premature rev- 
olution, mind. You must avoid bloodshed.” 

“ It is easy to say that beforehand ; but when 
a crowd of men once meets in the streets of 
Paris—” 

“It can do much by meeting, and cherishing 
resentment if the meeting be dispersed by an 
armed force, which it would be waste of life to 
resist. ” 

“We shall see when the time comes,” said 
Monnier, with a fierce gleam in his bold eyes. 

“I tell you, all that is required at this moment 
is an evident protest of the artisans of Paris 
against the votes of the ‘ rurals’ of France. Do 
you comprehend me ?” 

“I think so; if not, I obey. What we ou- 
vriers want is w'hat w'e have not got — a head to 
dictate action to us.” 

“See to this, then. Rouse the men you can 
command. I will take care that you have plen- 
tiful aid from foreigners. We may trust to the 
confreres of our council to enlist Poles and Ital- 
ians ; Gaspard Le Noy will turn out the volun- 
teer rioters at his command. Let the 4meuie be 
within, say, a week after the vote of the Plebis- 


136 THE PARISIANS. 


cite is taken. You will need that time to pre- 
pare. ” 

“Be contented — it shall be done.” 

“Good-night, then.” Lebeau leisurely took 
up his hat and drew on his gloves ; then, as if 
struck by a sudden thought, he turned briskly on 
the artisan and said, in quick, blunt tones, 

“Armand Monnier, explain to me why it is 
that you, a Parisian artisan, the type of a class 
the most insubordinate, the most self-conceited, 
that exists on the face of earth, take without 
question, with so docile a submission, the orders 
of a man who plainly tells you he does not sym- 
pathize in your ultimate objects, of whom you 
really know very little, and whose views you can- 
didly own you think are those of an old and ob- 
solete school of political reasoners. ” 

“ You puzzle me to explain,” said Monnier, 
with an ingenuous laugh, that brightened up feat- 
ures stern and hard, though comely when in re- 
pose. “Partly because you ave so straightfor- 
ward, and do not talk blague ; partly because I 
don’t think the class I belong to would stir an 
inch unless we had a leader of another class — 
and you give vie at least that leader. Again, you 
go to that first stage which we all agree to take, 
and — Well, do you want me to explain more ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Eh bien ! you have warned me, like an hon- 
est man ; like an honest man, I warn you. That 
first step we take together. I want to go a step 
further. You retreat; you say, ‘No.’ 1 reply, 
you are committed ; that further step you must 
take, or I cry, *‘Traitre! — a la lanterned You 
talk of ‘superior experience:’ bah! what does 
experience really tell you ? Do you suppose that 
Louis Egalite, when he began to plot against 
Louis XVIII., meant to vote for his kinsman’s 
execution by the guillotine? Do you suppose 
that Robespierre, when he commenced his ca- 
reer as the foe of capital punishment, foresaw 
that he should be the Minister of the Reign of 
Terror ? Not a bit of it. Each was committed 
by his use of those he designed for his tools. So 
must you be — or you perish.” 

Lebeau, leaning against the door, heard the 
frank avowal he had courted without betraying 
a change of countenance. But when Armand 
Monnier had done, a slight movement of his lips 
showed emotion. Was it of fear or disdain ? 

“ Monnier,” he said, gently, “ I am so much 
obliged to you. for the manly speech you have 
made. The scruples which my conscience had 
before entertained are dispelled. I dreaded lest 
I, a declared wolf, might seduce into peril an in- 
nocent sheep. I see I have to deal with a wolf 
of younger vigor and sharper fangs than myself ; 
so much the better; obey my orders now; leave 
it to time to say whether I obey yours later. 
Au revoir." 


CHAPTER VI. 

Isaura’s apartment, on the following Thurs- 
day evening, was more filled than usual. Be- 
sides her habitual devotees in the artistic or lit- 
erary world, there were diplomatists and depu- 
ties commixed with many fair chiefs of la jeu- 
nesse doree ; among the latter the brilliant En- 
guerrand de Vandemar, who, deeming the ac- 
quaintance of every celebrity essential to his own 


celebrity, in either Carthage, the beau monde^ 
or the demi-monde^ had, two Thursdays before, 
made Louvier attend her soiree and present him. 
Louvier, though gathering to his own salons au- 
thors and artists, very rarely favored their rooms 
with his presence; he did not adorn Isaura’s 
party that evening. But Duplessis was there, in 
compensation. It had chanced that Valerie had 
met Isaura at some house in the past w'inter, and 
conceived an enthusiastic affection for her : since 
then Valerie came very often to see her, and 
made a point of dragging with her to Isaura’s 
Thursday reunions her obedient father. Soirees, 
musical or literary, were not much in his line ; 
but he had no pleasure like that of pleasing his 
spoiled child. Our old friend Frederic Lemercier 
was also one of Isaura’s guests that night. He 
had become more and more intimate with Du- 
plessis, and Duplessis had introduced him to the 
fair Valerie as “ unjeune homme plein de moyens, 
qui ira loin.'' 

Savarin was there of course, and brought with 
him an English gentleman of the name of Bevil, 
as well known at Paris as in London — invited 
every where — popular eveiy where — one of those 
welcome contributors to the luxuries of civilized 
society who trade in gossip, sparing no pains to 
get the pick of it, and exchanging it liberally 
sometimes for a haunch of venison, sometimes 
for a cup of tea. His gossip not being adulter- 
ated with malice was in high repute for genuine 
worth. 

If Bevil said, “This storyisafact,”younomore 
thought of doubting him than you would doubt 
Rothschild if he said, “This is Lafitte of ’48.” 

Mr. Bevil was at present on a very short stay 
at Paris, and, naturally wishing to make the 
most of his time, he did not tarry beside Sava- 
rin, but, after being introduced to Isaura, flitted 
here and there through the assembly. 

“Apis Matinee- 
More modoque — 

Grata carpentis thyma.” 

The bee proffers honey, but bears a sting. 

The room was at its fullest when Gustave 
Rameau entered, accompanied by Monsieur de 
Mauleon. 

Isaura was agreeably surprised by the impres- 
sion made on her by the Vicomte’s appearance 
and manner. His writings, and such as she had 
heard of his earlier repute, had prepared her to 
see a man decidedly old, of withered aspect, and 
sardonic smile — aggressive in demeanor — for- 
ward or contemptuous in his v^y politeness — a 
Mephistopheles ingrafted on the stem of a Don 
Juan. She was startled by the sight of one who, 
despite his forty-eight years — and at Paris a man 
is generally older at forty-eight than he is else- 
where — seemed in the zenith of ripened man- 
hood — startled yet more by the singular modesty 
of a deportment too thoroughly high-bred not to 
be quietly simple — startled most by a melancholy 
expression in eyes tha*t could be at times soft, 
though always so keen, and in the grave pathet- 
ic smile which seemed to disarm censure of past 
faults in saying, “I have known sorrows.” 

He did not follow up his introduction to his 
young hostess by any of the insipid phrases of 
compliment to which she was accustomed, but, 
after expressing in grateful terms his thanks for 
the honor she had permitted Rameau to confer 
on him, he moved aside, as if he had no right to 


THE PARISIANS. 


137 


detain her from other guests more worthy her 
■notice, toward the doorway, taking his place by 
Enguerrand amidst a group of men of whom 
Duplessis was the central figure. 

At that time — the first week in May, 1870 — 
all who were then in Paris will remember there 
were two subjects uppermost in the mouths of 
men : first, the Plebiscite ; secondly, the con- 
spiracy to murder the Emperor— which the dis- 
atfected considered to be a mere fable, a pretense 
got up in time to serve the Plebiscite and prop 
the empire. 

Upon this latter subject Duplessis had been 
expressing himself with unwonted animation. A 
loyal and earnest Imperialist, it was only with 
effort that he could repress his scorn of that 
meanest sort of gossip which is fond of ascribing 
petty motives to eminent men. 

To him nothing could be more clearly evident 
than the reality of this conspiracy, and he had 
no tolerance for the malignant absurdity of main- 
taining that the Emperor or his ministers could 
be silly and wicked enough to accuse seventy- 
two persons of a crime which the police had been 
instructed to invent. 

As De Mauleon approached, the financier 
brought his speech to an abrupt close. He knew 
in the Vicomte de Mauleon the writer of articles 
which had endangered the government, and aim- 
ed no pointless shafts against its imperial head. 

“My cousin,” said Enguerrand, gayly, as he 
exchanged a cordial shake of the hand with Vic- 
tor, “ I congratulate you on the fame of journal- 
ist, into which you have vaulted, armed cap-a- 
pie, like a knight of old into his saddle ; but I 
don’t sympathize with the means you have taken 
to arrive at that renown. I am not myself an 
Imperialist — a Vandemar can be scarcely that. 
But if I am compelled to be on board a ship, I 
don’t wish to take out its planks and let in an 
ocean, when all offered to me instead is a crazy 
tub and a rotten rope.” 

“ Ties bien,” said Duplessis, in parliamentary 
tone and phrase. 

“But,” said De Mauleon, with his calm smile, 
“ would you like the captain of the ship, when 
the sky darkened and the sea rose, to ask the 
common sailors ‘ whether they approved his con- 
duct on altering his course or shortening his sail ?’ 
Better trust to a crazy tub and a rotten rope 
than to a ship in which the captain consults a 
Plebiscite.” 

“ Monsieur,” said Duplessis, “ your metaphor 
is ill chosen — no metaphor, indeed, is needed. 
The head of the state was chosen by the voice 
of the people, and, when required to change the 
form of administration which the people had 
sanctioned, and inclined to do so from motives 
the most patriotic and liberal, he is bound again 
to consult the people from whom he holds his 
power. It is not, however, of the Plebiscite we 
were conversing so much as of the atrocious con- 
spiracy of assassins — so happily discovered in 
time. I presume that Monsieur de Mauleon must 
share the indignation which true Frenchmen of 
every party must feel against a combination unit- 
ed by the purpose of murder.” 

The Vicomte bowed, as in assent. 

“ But do you believe,” asked a Liberal Depute, 
“ that such a combination existed, except in the 
visions of the police or the cabinet of a min- 
ister?” 


Duplessis looked keenly at De iMauldon while 
this question was put to him. Belief or disbe- 
lief in the conspiracy was with him, and with 
many, the test by which a sanguinary revolution- 
ist was distinguished from an honest politician. 

“Ma foi,” answered De Mauleon, shrugging 
his shoulders, “ I have only one belief left ; but 
that is boundless. I believe in the folly of man- 
kind in general, and of Frenchmen in particular. 
That seventy-two men should plot the assassina- 
tion of a sovereign on whose life interests so 
numerous and so watchful depend, and imagine 
they could keep a secret which any drunkard 
among them would blab out, any tatterdemal- 
ion would sell, is a hetise so gross that I think 
it highly probable. But pardon me if I look 
upon the politics of Paris much as I do upon its 
mud — one must pass through it when one walks 
in the street. One changes one’s shoes before 
entering the salon. — A word with you, Enguer- 
rand;” and taking his kinsman’s arm, he drew 
him aside from the circle. “ What has become 
of your brother? I see nothing of him now.” 

“Oh, Raoul,” answered Enguerrand, throwing 
himself on a couch in a recess, and making room 
for De Mauleon beside him. “ Raoul is devoting 
himself to the distressed ouvriers who have chosen 
to withdraw from work. When he fails to pei- 
suade them to return, he forces food and fuel on 
their wives and children. My good mother en- 
courages him in this costly undertaking, and no 
one but you who believe in the infinity of human 
folly would credit me when I tell you that his el- 
oquence has drawn from me all the argent de 
poche I get from our shop. As for himself, he 
has sold his horses, and even grudges a cab fare, 
saying, ^J'hat is a meal for a family.’ Ah! if 
he had but gone into the Church, what a saint 
would have deserved canonization !” 

“ Do not lament ; he will probably have what 
is a better claim than mere saintship on Heaven 
— martyrdom,” said De Mauleon, with a ‘smile 
in which sarcasm disappeared in melancholy. 
‘ ‘ Poor Raoul ! And what of my other cousin, the 
beau Marquis ? Several months ago his Legiti- 
mist faith seemed vacillating — he talked to me 
very fairly about the duties a Frenchman owed 
to France, and hinted that he should place his 
sword at tlie command of Napoleon III. I have 
not yet heard of him as a soldat de France — I 
hear a great deal of him as a viveur de Paris." 

“ Don’t you know why his desire for a mili- 
tarv career was frost-bitten ?” 

“No! Why?” 

“ Alain came from Bretagne profoundly, igno- 
rant of most things known to a gamin of Paris. 
When he conscientiously overcame the scruples 
natural to one of his name, and told the Duchess 
de Tarascon that he was ready to fight under the 
flag of France, whatever its color, he had a vague 
reminiscence of ancestral Rochebriants earning 
early laurels at the head of their regiments. At 
all events, he assumed as a matter of course that 
he, in the first rank as gentilhomme, would enter 
the army, if as a sous-Ueutenant, still as gentil- 
homme. But when told that, as he had been 
at no Military College, he could only enter the 
ranks as a private soldier — herd with private 
soldiers — for at least two years before, passing 
through the grade of corporal, his birth, educa- 
tion, habits of life, could, with great favor, raise 
him to the station of a sous-Ueutenant, you may 


138 


THE PARISIANS. 


conceive that the martial ardor of a Rochebriant 
was somewhat cooled.” 

“If he knew what the dormitory of French 
privates is, and how difficult a man well-edu- 
cated, well brought up, finds it, first, to endure 
the coarsest ribaldry and the loudest blasphemy, 
and then, having endured and been compelled to 
share them, ever enforce obedience and disci- 
pline as a superior among those with whom just 
before he was an equal, his ardor would not have 
been merely cooled — it would have been changed 
into despair for the armies of France, if here- 
after they are met by those whose officers have 
been trained to be officers from the outset, and 
have imbibed from their cradle an education not 
taught to the boy pedants from school — the two- 
fold education how with courtesy to command, 
how with dignity to obey. To return to Roche- 
briant, such salons as 1 frequent are somewhat 
formal — as befits ray grave years and my modest 
income ; 1 may add, now that you know my vo- 
cation, befits me also as a man who seeks rath- 
er to be instructed than amused. In those sa- 
lons, I did, last year, sometimes, however, meet 
Rochebriant — as I sometimes still meet you ; 
but of late he has deserted such sober reunions, 
and I hear with pain that he is drifting among 
those rocks against which my own youth was 
shipwrecked. Is the report true ?” 

“ I fear,” said Enguerrand, reluctantly, “ that 
at least the report is not unfounded. And my 
conscience accuses me of having been to blame 
in the first instance. You see, when Alain made 
terms with Louvier by which he obtained a very 
fair income, if prudently managed, I naturally 
wished that a man of so many claims to social 
distinction, and who represents the oldest branch 
of my family, should take his right place in our 
world of Paris. I gladly, therefore, presented 
him to the houses and the men most a la mode 
— advised him as to the sort of establishment, in 
apartments, horses, etc., which it appeared to 
me that he might reasonably afford — I mean 
such as, with his means, I should have prescribed 
to myself — ” 

“Ah! I understand. But you, dear Enguer- 
rand, are a born Parisian, every inch of you ; 
and a born Parisian is, whatever be thought to 
the contrary, the best manager in the world. He 
alone achieves the difficult art of uniting thrift 
with show. It is your provincial who comes to 
Paris, in the freshness of undimmed youth, who 
sows his whole life on its barren streets. I guess 
the rest : Alain is ruined. ” 

Enguerrand, who certainly was so far a born 
Parisian that, with all his shrewdness and savoir 
faire, he had a wonderfully sympathetic heart, 
very easily moved, one way or the other — En- 
guerrand winced at his elder kinsman’s words, 
complimentarily reproachful, and said, in un- 
wonted tones of humility, “ Cousin, you are cru- 
el, but you are in the right. I did not calculate 
sufficiently on the chances of Alain’s head be- 
ing turned. Hear my excuse. He seemed to me 
so much more thoughtful than most at our age 
are, so much more stately and proud — well, also 
so much more pure, so impressed with the re- 
sponsibilities of station, so bent on retaining the 
old lands in Bretagne — by habit and rearing so 
simple and self-denying-^.liha^.,I took it for 
granted he was proof agftiusf stronger tempta- 
tions than those which a''|j^ht na^ire like my 


own puts aside with a laugh. And at first I had 
no reason to think myself deceived, when, some 
months ago, I heard that he was getting into 
debt, losing at play, paying court to female vam- 
pires, who drain the life-blood of those on whom 
they fasten their fatal lips. Oh, then I spoke to 
him earnestly !” 

“And in vain?” 

“ In vain. A certain Chevalier de Finisterre, 
whom you may have heard of — ” 

“ Certainly, and met ; a friend of Louvier’s — ” 

“The same man — has obtained over him an 
influence which so far subdues mine that he al-' 
most challenged me when I told him his friend 
was a scamp. In fine, though Alain and I have 
not actually quarreled, we pass each other with, 

‘ Bonjour, mon ami.' " 

“ Hum ! My dear Enguerrand, you have done 
all you could. Flies will be flies, and spiders 
spiders, till the earth is destroyed by a comet. 
Nay, I met a distinguished naturalist in America 
who maintained that we shall find flies and spi- 
ders in the next world.” 

“You have been in America? Ah, true, I re- 
member, California!” 

“Where have I not been? Tush! music — 
shall I hear our fair hostess sing ?” 

“I am afraid not to night, because Madame 

S is to favor us, and the signorina makes 

it a rule not to sing at her own house when pro- 
fessional artists do. You must hear the Cicogna 
quietly some day ; such a voice — nothing like it.” 

Madame S , who, since she had learned 

that there was no cause to apprehend that Isaura 
might become her professional rival, conceived 
for her a wonderful affection, and willingly con- 
tributed her magnificent gifts of song to the 
charms of Isaura’s salon, now began a fragment 
from I Puritani, which held the audience as si- 
lent as the ghosts listening to Sappho ; and when 
it was over, several of the guests slipped away, 
especially those who disliked music, and feared 
Madame S might begin again. Enguer- 

rand was not one of such soulless recreants, but 
he had many other places to go to. Besides, 
Madame S was no novelty to him. 

De Mauleon now approached Isaura, who was 
seated next to Valerie, and after well-merited 

eulogium on Madame S ’s performance, slid 

into some critical comparisons between that sing- 
er and those of a former generation, which in- 
terested Isaura, and evinced to her quick per- 
ceptions that kind of love for music which has 
been refined by more knowledge of the art than 
is common to mere amateurs. 

“You have studied music. Monsieur de Mau- 
leon,” she said. “ Do you not perform yourself?” 

“ I — no. But music has always had a fatal at- 
traction for me. I ascribe half the errors of my 
life to that temperament which makes me too fas- 
cinated by harmonies — too revolted by discords.” 

“I should have thought such a temperament 
would have led from errors — are not errors dis- 
cords ?” 

“To the inner sense, yes; but to the outer 
sense not always. Virtues are often harsh to 
the ear — errors very sweet-voiced. The sirens 
did not sing out of tune. Better to stop one’s ears 
than glide on Scylla or be merged intoCharybdis.” 

“ Monsieur,” cried Valerie, with a pretty hrus- 
querie which became her well, “you talk like a 
Vandal.” ' 


THE PARISIANS. 


“It is, I think, by Mademoiselle Duplessis that 
I have the honor to be rebuked. Is monsieur 
your father very susceptible to music ?” 

“Well, I can not say that he cares much for 
it. But then his mind is so practical — ” 

“And his life so successful. No Scvlla, no 
Charybdis for him. However, mademoiselle, I 
am not quite the Vandal you suppose. I do not 
say that susceptibility to the intluence of music 
may not be safe, nay, healthful, to others — it 
was not so to me in my youth. It can do me 
no harm now.” 

Here Duplessis came up, and whispered his 
daughter “it was time to leave ; they had prom- 
ised the Duchesse de Tarascon to assist at the 
soiree she gave that night.” Valerie took her 
father’s arm with a brightening smile and a 
heightened color. Alain de Rochebriant might 
probably be at the Duchesse’s. 

“ Are you not going also to the Hotel de Ta- 
rascon, M. de Mauleon ?” asked Duplessis. 

“ No ; I was never there but once. The Du- 
chesse is an Imperialist, at once devoted and 
acute, and no doubt very soon divined my lack 
of faith in her idols.” 

Duplessis frowned, and hastily led Valerie 
away. 

In a few minutes the room was comparatively 
deserted. De Mauleon, however, lingered by the 
side of Isaura till all the other guests were gone. 
Even then he lingered still, and renewed the in- 
terrupted conversation with her, the Venosta 
joining therein ; and so agreeable did he make 
himself to her Italian tastes by a sort of bitter- 
sweet wisdom like that of her native proverbs 
— comprising much knowledge of mankind on 
the unflattering side of humanity in that form 
of pleasantry which has a latent sentiment of 
pathos — that the Venosta exclaimed, 

“Surely you must have been brought up in 
Florence ! ” 

There was that in De Mauleon’s talk hostile 
to all which we call romance that excited the im- 
agination of Isaura, and compelled her instinct- 
ive love for whatever is more sweet, more beau- 
tiful, more ennobling on the many sides of human 
life, to oppose what she deemed the paradoxes 
of a man who had taught himself to belie even 
his own nature. She became eloquent, and her 
countenance, which in ordinary moments owed 
much of its beauty to an expression of medita- 
tive gentleness, was now lighted up by the en- 
ergy of earnest conviction — the enthusiasm of an 
impassioned zeal. 

Gradually De Mauleon relaxed his share in 
the dialogue, and listened to her, rapt and dream- 
ingly, as in his fiery youth he had listened to the 
songs of the sirens. No siren Isaura ! She was 
defending her own cause, though unconsciously 
— defending the vocation of art as the embellish- 
er of external nature, and more than embellish- 
er of the nature which dwells, crude but plastic, 
in the soul of man ; indeed, therein the creator 
of a new nature, strengthened, expanded, and 
brightened in proportion as it accumulates the 
ideas that tend beyond the boundaries of the vis- 
ible and material nature, which is finite, for- 
ever seeking in the unseen and the spiritual the 
goals in the infinite which it is their instinct to 
divine. “ That which you contemptuously call 
romance,” said Isaura, “is not essential only to 
poets and artists. The most real side of every 


life, from the earliest dawn of mind in the in- 
fant, is the romantic. When the child is weav- 
ing flower chains, chasing butterflies, or sitting 
apart and dreaming what it will do in the future, 
is not that the child’s real life, and yet is it not 
also the romantic ?” 

‘ But there comes a time when we weave no 
flower chains, and chase no butterflies.” 

Is it so ? Still on one side of life flowers 
and butterflies may be found to the last ; and at 
least to the last are there no dreams of the fu- 
ture? Have you no such dreams at this moment? 
And without the romance of such dreams, would 
there be any reality to human life which could 
distinguish it from the life of the weed that rots 
on Lethe?” 

“ Alas, mademoiselle,” said De Mauleon, ris- 
ing to take leave, “your argument must rest 
without answer ; I would not, if 1 could, confute 
the beautiful belief that belongs to youth, fusing 
into one rainbow all the tints that can color the 
world. But the Signora Venosta will acknowl- 
edge the truth of an old saying, expressed in ev- 
ery civilized language, but best, perhaps, in that 
of tlie Florentine — ‘You might as well physic 
the dead as instruct the old, ’ ” 

“ But you are not old,” said the Venosta, with 
Florentine politeness — “you ! not a gray hair.” 

“’Tis not by the gray of the hair that one 
knows the age of the heart,” answered De Mau- 
leon, in another paraphrase of Italian proverb, 
and he was gone. 

As he walked homeward, through deserted 
streets, Victor de Mauleon thought to himself, 
“Poor girl, how I pity her ! Married to a Gus- 
tave Rameau — married to any man — nothing in 
the nature of man, be he the best and the clev- 
erest, can ever realize the dream of a girl who is 
pure and has genius. Ah, is not the converse 
true? What girl, the best and the cleverest, 
comes up to the ideal of even a commonplace 
man — if he ever dreamed of an ideal!” Then 
he paused, and in a moment or so afterward 
his thought knew such questionings no more. 
It turned upon personalities, on stratagems and 
plots, on ambition. The man had more than 
his share of that peculiar susceptibility which is 
one of the characteristics of his countrymen — 
susceptibility to immediate impulse — susceptibil- 
ity to fleeting impressions. It was a key to 
many mysteries in his character when he owned 
his subjection to the influence of music, and in 
music recognized not the seraph’s harp, but the 
siren’s song. If you could have permanently 
fixed Victor de Mauleon in one of the good mo- 
ments of his life even now — some moment of ex- 
quisite kindness, of superb generosity, of daunt- 
less courage — you would have secured a very rare 
specimen of noble humanity. .But so to fix him 
was impossible. 

That impulse of the moment vanished the mo- 
ment after, swept aside by the force of his very 
talents — talents concentrated by his intense sense 
or individuality — sense of wrongs or of rights — 
interests or objects personal to himself. He ex- 
tended the royal saying, c'est rnoi,” to 

words far more grandiloquent — “The universe, 
’tis I.” The Venosta would have understood 
him and smiled apprpvingly, if he had said, with 
a good-humored IfiOgh. “ I dead, the world is 
dead !” Thafe^is an Italian prevei-hj and means , 
much the sanofe tiring. ^ 


140 


THE PARISIANS. 


BOOK EIGHTH. 

* 


CHAPTER I. 

On the 8th of May the vote of the Plebiscite 
was recorded — between seven and eight millions 
of Frenchmen in support of the imperial pro- 
gramme — in plain words, of the Emperor him- 
self — against a minority of 1,500,000. But 
among the 1,500,000 were the old throne-shak- 
ers — those who compose and those who lead the 
mob of Paris. On the 14th, as Rameau was 
about to quit the editorial bureau of his printing- 
office, a note was brought in to him, which 
strongly excited his nervous system. It con- 
tained a request to see him forthwith, signed by 
those two distinguished foreign members of the 
Secret Council of Ten, Thaddeus Loubisky and 
Leonardo Raselli. 

The meetings of that Council had been so long 
suspended that Rameau had almost forgotten its 
existence. He gave orders to admit the con- 
spirators. The two men entered — the Pole, tall, 
stal u-art, and with .nartial stride j the Italian, 
small, emaciated, with skulking, noiseless, cat- 
like step — both looking wondrous threadbare, 
and in that state called “ shabby genteel,” which 
belongs to the man who can not work for his 
livelihood, and assumes a superiority over the 
man who can. Their outward appearance was 
in notable discord with that of the poet-politician 
— he all new in the last fashions of Parisian ele- 
gance, and redolent of Parisian prosperity and 
extrait de Mousseline! 

“ Confrere," said the Pole, seating himself on 
the edge of the table, while the Italian leaned 
against the mantel-piece, and glanced round the 
room with furtive eye, as if to detect its inner- 
most secrets, or decide where safest to drop a 
lucifer match for its conflagration — confrere " 
said the Pole, “ your country needs you — ” 

“ Rather the cause of all countries,” interposed 
the Italian, softly — “Humanity.” 

“Please to explain yourselves. But stay ; w'ait 
a moment,” said Rameau; and rising, he went 
to the door, opened it, looked forth, ascertained 
that tlie coast was clear, then reclosed the door 
as cautiously as a prudent man closes his pocket 
whenever shabby-genteel visitors appeal to him 
in the cause of his country, still more if they ap- 
peal in that of Humanity. 

“ Confrere" said the Pole, this day a move- 
ment is to be made — a demonstration on behalf 
of your country — ” 

“ Of Humanity,” again softly interposed the 
Italian. 

“ Attend and share it,” said the Pole. 

“ Pardon me,” said Rameau, “I do not know 
what you mean. I am now the editor of a jour- 
nal in which the proprietor does not countenance 
violence ; and if you come to me as a member 
of the Council, you must be aware that I should 
obey no orders but that of itS president, whom I 
have not seen for nearly a year ; indeed, I know 
not if the Council still exists.” 

“The Council exists, and with it the obliga- 
tions if imposes,” replied Thaddeus. “Pam- 
pered with luxury” — here the Pole raised his 
voice — “ do you dare to reject the voice of Pov- 
erty and Freedom ?” 


“ Hush, dear but too vehement confrere," 
murmured the bland Italian; “permit me to 
dispel the reasonable doubts of our confrere " 
and he took out of his breast pocket a paper, 
which he presented to Rameau. On it were 
written these words : 

“This evening. May 14. Demonstration. — 
Faubourg du Temple. — Watch events, under or- 
ders of A. M. Bid the youngest member take 
that first opportunity to test nerves and discre- 
tion. He is not to act, but to observe.” 

No name was appended to this instruction, 
but a cipher intelligible to all members of the 
Council as significant of its president, Jean Le- 
beau. 

“ If I eiT not,” said the Italian, “ Citizen 
Rameau is our youngest confrere" 

Rameau paused. The penalties for disobedi- 
ence to an order of the President of the Council 
were too formidable to be disregarded. There 
could be no doubt that, though his name was 
not mentioned, he, Rameau, was accurately des- 
ignated the youngest member of the Council. 
Still, however he might have owed his present 
position to the recommendation of Lebeau, there 
was nothing in the conversation of M. de Mau- 
leon which would warrant participation in a 
popular emeute by the editor of a journal belong- 
ing to that mocker of the mob. Ah ! but — and 
here again he glanced over the paper — he was 
asked “not to act, but to observe.” To observe 
was the duty of a journalist. He might go to 
the demonstration as De Mauleon confessed he 
had gone to the Communist Club — a philosopli- 
ical spectator. 

“You do not disobey this order?” said the 
Pole, crossing his arms. 

“ I shall certainly go into the Faubourg du 
Temple this evening,” answered Rameau, dryly. 
“ I have business that way.” 

Bon!" said the Pole. “I did not think 
you would fail us, though you do edit a journal 
which says not a word on the duties that bind 
the French people to the resuscitation of Po- 
land.” 

“ And is not pronounced in decided accents 
upon the cause of the human race,” put in the 
Italian, whispering. 

“1 do not write the political articles in Le 
Sens Commun" answered Rameau; “and I 
suppose that our president is satisfied with them, 
since he recommended me to the preference of 
the person who does. Have you more to say? 
Pardon me, my time is precious, for it does not 
belong to me.” 

“ Eno !” said the Italian ; “ we will detain you 
no longer.” Here, with bow and smile, he glided 
toward the door. 

“ Confrere," muttered the Pole, lingering, 
“you must have become very rich ! Do not for- 
get the wrongs of Poland — I am their Represent- 
ative — I — speaking in that character, not as my- 
self individually — I have not breakfasted ! ” 

Rameau, too thoroughly Parisian not to be as 
lavish of his own money as he was envious of an- 
other’s, slipped some pieces of gold into the Pole’s 
hand. The Pole’s bosom heaved with manly emo- 
tion. “ These pieces bear the effigies of the tyrant 




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SUDDENLY, AT THE ANGLE OF A STEEKT, UTS OOAOIIMAN WAS STOPPED— A EOUGH-LOOKTNG MAN APPEALED AT THE DOOE — ‘‘DE- 
SCEND, MON PETIT BOURGEOIS.” BEHIND THE ROUGH-LOORINO MAN WERE MENACING FACES. 








THE PARISIANS. 


— I accept them as redeemed from disgrace by 
their uses to Freedom.” 

“ Share them with Siguor Raselli in the name 
of the same cause,” whispered Rameau, with ' 
smile he might have plagiarized from De Mau- 
leon. 

The Italian, whose ear was inured to whis- 
pers, heard and turned round as he stood at the 
threshold. 

“No, confrere of France — no, confrere of Po- 
land — I am Italian. All ways to take the life of 
an enemy are honorable — no way is honorable 
which begs money from a friend, ” 

An hour or so later Rameau was driven in his 
comfortable coupe to the Faubourg du Temple. 

Suddenly, at the angle of a street, his coach- 
man was stopped — a rough-looking man appeared 
at the door — Descend^ vion petit bourgeois.” 
Behind the rough-looking man were menacing 
faces. 

Rameau was not physically a coward — very few 
Frenchmen are, still fewer Parisians ; and still 
fewer, no matter what their birth-place, the men 
whom we call vain — the men who overmuch covet 
distinction, and overmuch dread reproach. 

“ Why should I descend at your summons ?” 
said Rameau, haughtily. Bah ! Coachman, 
drive on !” 

The rough-looking man opened the door, and 
silently extended a hand to Rameau, saying, gen- 
tly, ‘ ‘ Take my advice, vion bourgeois. Get out 
— we want your carriage. It is a day of barri- 
cades — every little helps, even your coupe I” 

While this man spoke, others gesticulated ; 
some shrieked out, “He is an employer; he 
thinks he can drive over the employed !” Some 
leader of the crowd — a Parisian crowd always has 
a classical leader, who has never read the classics — 
thundered forth, “ Tarquin’s car !” ‘ ‘ Down with 
Tarquin!” Therewith came a yell, “A la lan- 
terne — Tarquin !” 

We Anglo-Saxons, of the old country or the 
new, are not familiarized to the dread roar of a 
populace delighted to have a Roman authority 
for tearing us to pieces ; still Ameiicans know 
what is Lynch-law. Rameau was in danger of 
Lynch-law, when suddenly a face not unknown 
to* him interposed between himself and the rough- 
looking man. 

“Ha!” cried this new-comer. “My young 
confrere, Gustave Rameau, welcome ! Citizens, 
make way. I answ'er for this patriot — I, Armand 
Monnier. He comes to help us. Is this the way 
vou receive him ?” Then in low voice to Rameau, 
*“ Come out. Give your coup€ to the barricade. 
What matters such rubbish ? Trust to me — I 
expected you. Hist! — Lebeau bids me see that 
you are safe.” 

Rameau then, seeking to drape himself in maj- 
esty — as the aristocrats of journalism in a city 
wherein no other aristocracy is recognized natu- 
rally and commendably do w'hen ignorance com- 
bined with physical strength asserts itself to be a 
power beside which the power of knowledge is 
what a learned poodle is to a tiger — Rameau 
then descended from his coup^, and said to this 
Titan of labor, as a French marquis might have 
said to his valet, and as w'hen the French marquis 
has become a ghost of the ])ast the man who keeps 
a coup€ says to the man w'ho mends his wheels, 
“ Honest fellow, I trust you.” 

Monnier led the journalist through the mob to 


141 

the rear of the barricade hastily constructed. 
Here were assembled very motley groups. 

The majoiity being ragged boys, the gamins 
of Paris, commingled with several women of no 
'•eputable appearance, some dingily, some gaudi- 
ii^ appareled, the crowd did not appear as if 
the ’ vsiness in hand was a very serious one. 
Amidst Ills, of voices the sound of laughter 
rose predominant, jests and bons mots flew from 
lip to lip. The astonishing good humor of the 
Parisians was not yet excited into the ferocity 
that grows out of it by a street contest. It was 
less like a popular €meute than a gathering of 
school-boys, bent not less on fun than on mischief. 
But still amidst this gayer crowd were sinister, 
lowering faces ; the fiercest were not those of the 
very poor, but rather of artisans who, to judge by 
their dress, seemed well off — of men belonging to 
•yet higher grades. Rameau distinguished among 
these the Medecin des Pauvres, the philosophical 
atheist, sundry young long-haired artists, middle- 
aged writers for the Republican press, in close 
neighborhood with ruffians of villainous aspect, 
who might have been newly returned from the 
galleys. None were regularly armed, still re- 
volvers and muskets and long knives were by no 
means unfrequently interspersed among the riot- 
ers. The whole scene was to Rameau a confused 
panorama, and the dissonant tumult of yells and 
laughter, of menace and joke, began rapidly to 
act on his impressionable neiwes. He felt that 
which is the prevalent character of a Parisian 
riot — the intoxication of an impulsive sympathy. 
Coming there as a reluctant spectator, if action 
commenced, he would have been borne readily 
into the thick of the action — he could not have 
helped it ; already he grew impatient of the sus- 
pense of strife. Monnier having deposited him 
safely with his back to a wall, at the corner of a 
street handy for flight, if flight became expedient, 
had left him for several minutes, having business 
elsewhere. Suddenly the whisper of the Italian 
stole into his ear — ‘ ‘ These men are fools. This is 
not the way to do business — this does not hurt the 
Robber of Nice — Garibald’s Nice. They should 
have left it to me.” 

“ What would you do ?” 

“ I have invented a new machine,” whispered 
the Friend of Humanity ; “it would remove all 
at one blow — lion and lioness, whelp and jackals — 
and then the Revolution if you will! — not this pal- 
try tumult. The cause of the human race is be- 
ing frittered awky. I am disgusted with Lebeau. 
Thrones are not overturned by gamins.” 

Before Rameau could answer, Monnier rejoin- 
ed him. The artisan’s face was overcast — his 
lips compressed, yet quivering with indignation. 
“ Brother, ” he said to Rameau, ‘ ‘ to-day the cause 
is betrayed” — (the word trahi was just then com- 
ing into vogue at Paris) — “ the blouses I counted 
on are recreant. I have just learned that all is 
quiet in the other Quartiers where the rising was 
to have been simultaneous with this. We are in 
a guet-apens — the soldiers will be down on us in a 
few minutes — hark ! don’t you hear the distant 
tramp ? Nothing for us but to die like men. Our 
blood will be avenged later. Here!” and he 
thrust a revolver into Rameau’s hand. Then, 
with a lusty voice that rang through the crowd, he 
shouted, “ Vive lepeuple!” The rioters caught 
and re-echoed the cry, mingled with other cries, 
“ Vive la Republique! Vive le drapeau rouge !” 


142 


THE PARISIANS. 


The shouts were yet at their full when a strong 
hand grasped Monnier’s arm, and a clear, deep 
but low voice thrilled through his ear — “Obey! 
— I warned you. No fight to-day. Time not ripe. 
All that is needed is done — do not undo it. Hist ! 
the Sergens de Ville are force enough to disperse 
the swarm of those gnats. Behind the Sergens 
come soldiers who will not fraternize. Lose not 
one life to-day. The morrow when we shall 
need every man — nay, every gamin — will dawn 
soon. Answer not. Obey!” The same strong 
hand, quitting its hold on Monnier, then seized 
Rameau by the wrist, and the same deep voice 
said, “Come with me.” Rameau, turning in 
amaze, not unmixed with anger, saw beside him 
a tall man with sombrero hat pressed close over 
his head, and in the blouse of a laborer, but 
through such disguise he recognized the pale gray 
whiskers and green spectacles of Lebeau. He 
yielded passively to the grasp that led him away 
down the deserted street at the angle. 

At the further end of that street, however, 
was heard the steady thud of hoofs. 

“ The soldiers are taking the mob at its rear,” 
said Lebeau, calmly; “we have not a moment 
to lose — this way;” and he plunged into a dis- 
mal court, then into a labyrinth of lanes, follow- 
ed mechanically by Rameau. They issued at 
last on the Boulevards, in which the usual loun- 
gers were quietly sauntering, wholly unconscious 
of the riot elsewhere. “Now take that fiacre 
and go home ; write down your impressions of 
what you have seen, and take your MS. to M. 
de Mauleon.” Lebeau here quitted him. 

Meanwhile all happened as Lebeau had pre- 
dicted. The Sergens de Ville showed them- 
selves in front of the barricades ; a small troop 
of mounted soldiers appeared in the rear. The 
mob greeted the first with yells and a shower of 
stones ; at the sight of the last they fled in all di- 
rections ; and the Sergens de Ville^ calmly scal- 
ing the barricades, carried off in triumph, as 
prisoners of war, four gamins, three women, and 
one Irishman, loudly protesting innocence, and 
shrieking, “Murther!” So ended that first in- 
glorious rise against the Plebiscite and the em- 
pire, on the 14th of May, 1870. 

FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE 
GRANTMBSNIL. 

“ Saturday, May 21 , 1870 . 

“I am still, dearest Eulalie, under the ex- 
citement of impressions wholly hew to me. I 
have this day witnessed one of those scenes 
which take us out of our private life, not into 
the world of fiction, but of history, in which we 
live as in the life of a nation. You know how 
intimate I have become with Valerie Duplessis. 
She is in herself so charming in her combination 
of petulant willfulness and guileless ncdvete that 
she might sit as a model for one of your exqui- 
site heroines. Her father, who is in great fa- 
vor at court, had tickets for the Salle des Etats 
of the Louvre to-day — when, as the journals will 
tell you, the results of the PUbiscite were formal- 
ly announced to the Emperor — and I accompa- 
nied him and Valerie. I felt, on enteringthe hall, 
as if I had been living for months in an atmos- 
phere of false rumors, for those I chiefly meet 
in the circles of artists and men of letters, and 
the wits and fidneurs who haunt such circles, 
are nearly all hostile to the Emperor. They 


agree, at least, in asserting the decline of his 
popularity, the failure of his intellectual powers 
— in predicting his downfall, deriding the notion 
of a successor in his son. Well, I know not how 
to reconcile these statements with the spectacle 
I have beheld to-day. 

“In the chorus of acclamation amidst w'hich 
the Emperor entered the hall it seemed as if one 
heard the voice of the France he had just ap- 
I pealed to. If the Fates are really weaving woe 
j and shame in his woof, it is in hues which, to 
mortal eyes, seem brilliant with glory and joy. 

“You will read the address of the President 
of the Corps Legislatif. I wonder how it Avill 
strike you. I own fairly that me it wholly car- 
ried away. At each sentiment I murmured to 
myself, ‘ Is not this true ? and, if true, are 
France and human nature ungrateful ?’ 

“‘It is now,’ said the president, ‘eighteen 
years since France, wearied with confusion and 
anxious for security, confiding in your genius 
and the Napoleonic dynasty, placed in your 
hands, together with the Imperial Crown, the 
authority which the public necessity demanded.’ 
Then the address proceeded to enumerate the 
blessings that ensued — social order speedily re- 
stored — the welfare of all classes of society pro- 
moted — advances in commerce and manufactures 
to an extent hitherto unknown. Is not this true ? 
and if so, are you, noble daughter of France, un- 
grateful ? 

“Then came words which touched me deep- 
ly — me, who, knowing nothing of politics, still 
feel the link that unites Art to Freedom. ‘ But 
from the first your Majesty has looked forward 
to the time when this concentration of power 
would no longer correspond to the aspirations 
of a tranquil and reassured country, and fore- 
seeing the progress of modern society, you pro- 
claimed that “Liberty must be the crowning of 
the edifice.’” Passing then over the previous 
gradual advances in popular goveinment, the 
president came to the ‘ present self-abnegation, 
unprecedented in history,’ and to the vindication 
of that Plebiscite which I have heard so assailed 
— viz.. Fidelity to the great principle upon which 
the throne was founded required that so impor- 
tant a modification of a power bestowed by the 
people should not be made without the partici- 
pation of the people themselves. Then, enumer- 
ating the millions who had welcomed the new 
form of government, the president paused a sec- 
ond or two, as if with suppressed emotion, and 
every one present held his breath, till, in a deep- 
er voice, through which there ran a quiver that 
thrilled through the hall, he concluded with, 

‘ France is with you ; Fiance places the cause 
of liberty under the protection of your dynasty 
and the great bodies of the state.’ Is France 
with him ? I know not ; but if the malcontents 
of France had been in the hall at that moment, 
I believe they would have felt the power of that 
wonderful sympathy which compels all the hearts 
in great audiences to beat in accord, and would 
have answered, ‘It is true.’ 

“All eyes now fixed on the Emperor, and I 
noticed few eyes which were not moist with tears. 
You know that calm, unrevealing face of his — a 
face which sometimes disappoints expectation. 
But there is that in it .which I have seen in 
no other, but which I can imagine to have been 
common to the Romans of old, the dignity that 


THE PARISIANS. 


143 


arises from self-control — an expression which 
seems removed from the elation of joy, the de- 
pression of sorrow — not unbecoming to one who 
has known great vicissitudes of Fortune, and is 
prepared alike for her frowns or her smiles. 

“ 1 had looked at that face while M. Schneider 
was reading the address — it moved not a muscle ; 
it might have been a face of marble : even when 
at moments the words were drowned in applause, 

, and the Empress, striving at equal composure, 
still allowed us to see a movement of her eyelids 
— a tremble on her lips. The boy at his right, 
heir to his dynasty, had his looks fixed on the 
president, as if eagerly swallowing each word in 
the address, save once or twice, when he looked 
round the hall curiously, and with a smile, as a 
mere child might look. He struck me as a mere 
child. Next to the Prince was one of those 
countenances which, once seen, are never to be 
forgotten — the true Napoleonic type, brooding, 
thoughtful, ominous, beautiful, but not with the 
serene energy that characterizes the head of the 
first Napoleon when Emperor, and wholly with- 
out the restless eagerness for action which is 
stamped in the lean outline of Napoleon when 
First Consul. No ; in Prince Napoleon thei'e is 
the beauty to which, as woman, I could never 
give my heart — were I man, the intellect that 
would not command my trust. But, neverthe- 
less, in beauty it is signal, and in that beauty the 
expression of intellect is predominant. 

“Oh, dear Eulalie, how I am digressing! 
The Emperor spoke — and believe me, Eulalie, 
Avhatever the journals or your compatriots may 
insinuate, there is in that man no signs of de- 
clining intellect or failing health. I care not 
what may be his years, but that man is in mind 
and in health as young as Caesar when he crossed 
the Rubicon. 

“The old cling to the past — they do not go 
forward to the future. There was no going back 
in that speech of the Emperor. There was 
something grand and something young in the 
modesty with which he put aside all references 
to that which his empire had done in the past, 
and said, with a simple earnestness of manner 
which I can not adequately describe : 

“ ‘We must more than ever look fearlessly 
forward to the future. Who can be opposed to 
the progressive march of a regime founded by a 
great people in the midst of political disturbance, 
and which now is fortified by liberty ?’ 

“As he closed, the walls of that vast hall 
seemed to rock with an applause that must have 
been heard on the other side of the Seine. 

“ ‘ Vive V Empereur !' 

“ ‘ Vive V Imperatrice V 

“ ‘ Vive le Prince Imperial!' And the last 
crv was yet more prolonged than the others, as 
if to affirm the dynasty. 

“Certainly I can imagine no court in the old 
days of chivahy more splendid than the audience 
in that grand hall of the Eouvre. To the right 
of the throne all the embassadors of the civilized 
world in the blaze of their rich costumes a:nd 
manifold orders. In the gallery at the left, yet 
more behind, the dresses and jewels of the dames 
d'lionneur and of the great officers of state. And 
when the Empress rose to depart, certainly my 
fancy can not picture a more queen-like image, 
or one that seemed more in unison with the rep- 
resentation of royal pomp and power. The very 


dress, of a color which would have been fatal to 
the beauty of most women equally fair — a deep 
golden color (Valerie profanely called it buff) 
— seemed so to suit the splendor of the ceremony 
and the day ; it seemed as if that stately foi'm 
stood in the midst of a sunlight reflected from 
itself. Day seemed darkened when that sun- 
light passed away. 

“I fear you will think I have suddenly grown 
servile to the gauds and shows of mere royalty. 

I ask myself if that be so — I think not. Surely 
it is a higher sense of greatness which has been 
impressed on me by the pageant of to-day: I 
feel as if there were brought vividly before me 
the majesty of France, through the representa- 
tion of the ruler she has crowned. 

“I feel also as if there, in that hall, I found 
a refuge from all the warring contests in which 
no two seem to me in agreement as to the sort 
of government to be established in place of the 
present. The ‘Liberty’ clamored for by one 
would cut the throat of the ‘ Liberty’ worshiped 
by another. 

“I see a thousand phantom forms of Liber- 
ty, but only one living symbol of Order — that 
which spoke from a throne to-day.” 

Isaura left her letter uncompleted. On the 
following Monday she was present at a crowded 
soiree given by M. Louvier. Among the guests 
were some of the most eminent leaders of the 
Opposition, including that vivacious master of 

sharp sayings, M. F , whom Savarin entitled 

‘ ‘ the French Sheridan.” If laws could be framed 
in epigrams, he would be also the French Solon. 

There, too, was Victor de Mauleon, regarded 
by the Republican party with equal admiration 
and distrust. i For the distrust he himself pleas- 
antly accounted in talk with Savarin. 

‘ ‘ How can I expect to be trusted ? I rep- 
resent ‘Common-Sense.’ Every Parisian likes 
Common-Sense in print, and cries, ‘Je suis trahi,' 
when Common-Sense is to be put into action.” 

A group of admiring listeners had collected 
round one (perhaps the most, brilliant) of those 
oratorical lawyers by whom, in France, the re- 
spect for all law has been so often talked away. 
He was speaking of the Saturday’s ceremonial 
with eloquent indignation. It was a mockery to 
France to talk of her placing Liberty under the 
protection of the empire. 

There was a flagrant token of the military 
force under which civil freedom was held in the 
very dress of the Emperor and his insignificant 
son : the first in the uniform of a General of Di- 
vision ; the second, forsooth, in that of a Sous- 
Lieutenant. Then other liberal chiefs chimed 
in. “The army,” said one, “was an absurd 
expense; it must be put down.” “The world 
was grown too civilized for war,” said another. 
“The Empress was priest-ridden,” said a third. 
“Churches might be tolerated — Voltaire built 
a church, but a church simply to the God of Na- 
ture, not of priestcraft.” And so on. 

Isaura, whom any sneer at religion pained and 
revolted, here turned away from the orators to 
whom she had before been listening with earnest 
attention, and her eyes fell on the countenance 
of De Mauleon, who was seated opposite. The 
countenance startled her, its expression was so 
angrily scornful. That expression, however, van- 
ished at once as De Mauleon’s eye met her own. 


144 


THE PARISIANS. 


and drawing his chair near to her, he said, smil- 
ing, “Your look tells me that I almost fright- 
ened you by the ill-bred fiankness with which 
my face must have betrayed my anger at hear- 
ing such imbecile twaddle from men who aspire 
to govern our turbulent France. You remem- 
ber that after Lisbon was destroyed by an earth- 
quake a quack advertised ‘pills against earth- 
quakes. ’ These messieurs are not so cunning as 
the quack ; he did not name the ingredients of 
his pills.” 

“But, M. de Mauleon,” saidlsaura, “if you, 
being opposed to the empire, think so ill of the 
wisdom of those who would destroy it, are you 
prepared with remedies for earthquakes more ef- 
ticacious than their pills ?” 

“I reply as a famous English statesman, 
when in opposition, replied to a somewhat sim- 
ilar question, ‘I don’t prescribe till I’m called 
in.’” 

“To judge by the seven millions and a half 
whose votes were announced on Saturday, and 
by the enthusiasm with which the Emperor was 
greeted, there is too little fear of an earthquake 
for a good trade to the pills of these messieurs, 
or for fair play to the remedies you will not dis- 
close till called in.” 

“ Ah, mademoiselle, playful wit from lips not 
formed for politics makes me forget all about 
emperors and earthquakes. Pardon that com- 
monplace compliment. Remember I am a 
Frenchman, and can not help being frivolous.” 

“You rebuke my presumption too gently. 
True, I ought not to intrude political subjects on 
one like you — I understand so little about them 
— but this is my excuse, I so desire to know 
more.” 

M. de Mauleon paused, and looked at her 
earnestly with a kindly, half-compassionate look, 
wholly free from the impertinence of gallantry. 
“Young poetess,” he said, softly, “you care for 
politics ! Happy indeed is he — and whether he 
succeed or fail in his ambition abroad, proud 
should he be of an ambition crowned at home — 
he who has made you desire to know more of 
politics !” 

The girl felt the blood surge to her temples. 
How could she have been so self-confessed ! 
She made no reply, nor did M. de Mauleon seem 
to expect one. With that rare delicacy of high- 
breeding which appears in France to belong to a 
former generation he changed his tone, and went 
on as if there had been no interruption to the 
question her words implied : 

“You think the empire secure — that it is 
menaced by no earthquake ? You deceive your- 
self. The Emperor began with a fatal mistake, 
but a mistake it needs many years to discover. 
He disdained the slow natural process of adjust- 
ment between demand and supply — employer 
and workmen. He desired — no ignoble ambi- 
tion — to make Paris the wonder of the world, 
the eternal monument of his reign. In so doing 
he sought to create artificial modes of content 
for revolutionary workmen. Never has any 
ruler had such tender heed of manual labor to 
the disparagement of intellectual culture. Paris 
is embellished ; Paris is the wonder of the world. 
Other great towns have followed its example; 
they too have their rows of palaces and tem- 
ples. Well, the time comes when the magician 
can no longer give work to the spirits he raises ; 


then they must fall on him and rend : out of the 
very houses he built for the better habitation of 
workmen will flock the malcontents who cry, 
‘Down with the empire!’ On the 21st day 
of May you witnessed the pompous ceremony 
which announces to the empire a vast majority 
of votes that will be utterly useless to it, except 
as food for gunpowder in the times that are at 
hand. Seven days before, on the 14th of May, 
there was a riot in the Faubourg du Temple — , 
easily put down — you scarcely hear of it. 'I’liat 
riot was not the less necessary to those who 
would warn the empire that it is mortal. True, 
the riot disperses ; but it is unpunished : riot un- 
punished is a revolution begun. The earthquake 
is nearer than you think; and for that earth- 
quake what are the pills yon quacks advertise? 
They prate of an age too enlightened for war ; 
they would mutilate the army — nay, disband it 
if they could — with Prussia next door to France. 
Prussia, desiring, not unreasonably, to take that 
place in the world which France now holds, will 
never challenge France — if she did she would be 
too much in the wrong to find a second; Prussia, 
knowing that she has to do with the vainest, the 
most conceited, the rashest antagonist that ever 
flourished a rapier into the face of a spadassin — 
Prussia will make France challenge her. 

“And how do ces messieurs deal with the 
French army ? Do they dare say to the minis- 
ters, ‘ Reform it ?’ Do they dare say, ‘ Prefer 
for men whose first duty it is to obey — discipline 
to equality ; insist on the distinction between 
the otiicer and the private, and never confound 
it; Prussian officers are well-educated gentle- 
men — see that yours are ?’ Oh no ! they are 
democrats too stanch not to fraternize with an 
armed mob ; they content themselves with grudg- 
ing an extra sou to the Commissariat, and wink- 
ing at the millions fraudulently pocketed by some 
‘ Liberal contractor.’ Dieti des dieux ! France 
to be beaten, not as at Waterloo by hosts com- 
bined, but in fair duel by a single foe ! Oh, the 
shame ! the shame ! But as the French army 
is now organized, beaten she must be, if she 
meets the march of the German.” 

“You appall me with your sinister predic- 
tions,” said Isaura; “but, happily, there is no 
sign of war. M. Duplessis, who is in the confi- 
dence of the Emperor, told us only the other 
day that Napoleon, on learning the result of the 
Ple'biscite, said, ‘ The foreign journalists who 
have been insisting that the empire can not co- 
exist with free institutions will no longer hint 
that it can be safely assailed from without. ’ And 
more than ever Imay say, L' Empire cest lapaizV 

Monsieur de Mauleon shrugged his shoulders. 

“ The old story — Troy and the wooden horse.” 

“Tell me, M. de Mauleon, why do you, who 
so despise the Opposition, join with it in oppos- 
ing the empire ?” 

“Mademoiselle, the empire opposes me. 
While it lasts I can not be even a Depute ; when 
it is gone — Heaven knows what I may be, per- 
haps Dictator — one thing you may rely upon, 
that I would, if not Dictator myself, support any 
man who was better fitted for that task.” 

“Better fitted to destroy the liberty which he 
pretended to fight for!” 

“Not exactly so,” replied M. de Mauleon, 
imperturbably. “Better fitted to establish a 
good government in lieu of the bad one he had 


THE PARISIANS. 


fought against, and the much worse governments 
that would seek to turn France into a mad-house, 
and make the maddest of the inmates the mad- 
doctor.” He turned away, and here their con- 
versation ended. 

But it so impressed Isaura that the same night 
she concluded her letter to Madame de Grant- 
mesnil by giving a sketch of its substance, pref- 
aced by an ingenuous confession that she felt 
less sanguine confidence in the importance of the 
applauses which had greeted the Emperor at the 
Saturday’s ceremonial, and ending thus: “lean 
but confusedly transcribe the words of this sin- 
gular man, and can give you no notion of the 
manner and the voice which made them elo- 
quent. Tell me, can there be any truth in his 
gloomy predictions ? I try not to think so, but 
they seem to rest over that brilliant hall of the 
Louvre like an ominous thunder-cloud.” 


CHAPTER II. 

The Marquis de Rochebriant was seated in 
his pleasant apartment, glancing carelessly at 
the envelopes of many notes and letters lying 
yet unopened on his breakfast-table. He had 
risen late at noon, for he had not gone to bed 
till dawn. The night had been spent at his 
club — over the card-table — by no means to the 
pecuniary advantage of the Marquis. The read- 
er will have learned through the conversation 
recorded in a former chapter between De Mau- 
leon and Enguerrand de Vandemar that the aus- 
tere Seigneur Breton had become a fast Viveur 
of Paris. He had long since spent the remnant 
of Louvier’s premium of £1000, and he owed a 
year’s interest. For this last there was an ex- 
cuse — M. Collot, the contractor, to whom he had 
been advised to sell the yearly fall of his forest 
trees, had removed the trees, but had never paid 
a sou beyond the preliminary deposit ; so that the 
revenue, out of which the mortgagee should be 
paid his interest, was not forth- coming. Alain 
had instructed M. Hebert to press the contract- 
or ; the contractor had replied that if not press- 
ed he could soon settle all claims, if pressed he 
must declare himself bankrupt. The Chevalier 
de Finisterre had laughed at the alarm which 
Alain conceived when he first found himself in 
the condition of debtor for a sum he could not 
pay — creditor for a sum he could not recover. 

‘‘‘‘Bagatelle!" said the Chevalier. “Tschu! 
Collot, if you give him time, is as safe as the 
Bank of France, and’Louvier knows it. Louvier 
will not trouble you — Louvier, the best fellow in 
the world. I’ll call on him and explain matters.” 

It is to be presumed that the Chevalier did so 
explain, for though both at the first, and quite 
recently at the second default of payment, Alain 
received letters from M. Louvier’s professional 
agent as reminders of interest due, and as re- 
quests for its payment, the Chevalier assured 
him that these applications were formalities of 
convention — that Louvier, in fact, knew nothing 
about them; and when dining with the great 
financier himself, and cordially welcomed and 
called “Mon cher" Alain had taken him aside 
and commenced explanation and excuse, Lou- 
vier had cut him short. ‘‘‘‘ Peste! don’t mention 
such trifles. There is such a thing as business — 


145 

that concerns my agent ; such a thing as friend- 
ship — that concerns me. Allez!" 

Thus M. de Rochebriant, confiding in debtor 
and in creditor, had suffered twelve months to 
glide by without much heed of either, and more 
than lived up to an income amply sufficient, in- 
deed, for the wants of an ordinary bachelor, but 
needing more careful thrift than could well be 
expected from the head of one of the most illus- 
trious houses in France, cast so voung into the 
vortex of the most expensive capital in the world. 

The poor Marquis glided into the grooves that 
slant downward, much as the French Marquis of 
tradition was wont to slide ; not that he appeared 
to live extravagantly, but he needed all he had 
for his pocket-money, and had lost that dread of 
being in debt which he had brought up from the 
purer atmosphere of Bretagne. 

But there were some debts which, of course, 
a Rochebriant must pay — debts of honor — and 
Alain had on the previous night incurred such a 
debt, and must pay it that day. He had been 
strongly tempted, when the debt rose to the figure 
it had attained, to risk a change of luck ; bur 
whatever his imprudence, he was incapable of 
dishonesty. If the luck did not change, and he 
lost more, he would be without means to meet 
his obligations. As the debt now stood, he cal- 
culated that he could just discharge it by the sale 
of his coup€ and horses. It is no wonder he left 
his letters unopened, however charming they 
might be ; he was quite sure they would contain 
no check which would enable him to pay his debt 
and retain his equipage. 

The door opened, and the valet announced M. 
le Chevalier de Finisterre — a man with smooth 
countenance and air distingue^ a pleasant voice 
and perpetual smile. 

“Well, moncAer,” cried the Chevalier, “I hope 
that you recovered the favor of Fortune before 
you quitted her green-table last night. When I 
left she seemed very cross with you.” 

“And so continued to the end,” answered 
Alain, with well-simulated gayety — much too hon 
gentilhomme to betray rage or anguish for pecun- 
iary loss. 

“After all,” said De Finisterre, lighting his 
cigarette, “ the uncertain goddess could not do 
you much harm ; the stakes were small, and your 
adversary, the Prince, never goes double or quits.” 

“Nor I either. ‘ Small, ’ however, is a word 
of relative import ; the stakes might be small to 
you, to me large. Entre nous, cher ami, I am at 
the end of my purse, and I have only this conso- 
lation — I am cured of play ; not that I leave the 
complaint — the complaint leaves me ; it can no 
more feed on me than a fever can feed on a 
skeleton.” 

“Are you serious?” 

“As serious as a mourner who has just buried 
his all.” 

“ His all ? Tut, with such an estate as Roche- 
briant!” 

For the first time in that talk Alain’s counte- 
nance became overcast. 

“And how long will Rochebriant be mine? 
You know that I hold it at the mercy of the 
mortgagee, whose interest has not been paid, and 
who could, if he so pleased, issue notice, take pro- 
ceedings — that — ” 

“Peste!" interrupted De Finisterre; “Lou- 
vier take proceedings ! Louvier, the best fellow 


146 


THE PARISIANS. 


in the world ! But don’t I see his handwriting 
on that envelope? No doubt an invitation to 
dinner.” 

Alain took up the letter thus singled forth from 
a miscellany of epistles, some in female handwrit- 
ings, unsealed but ingeniously twisted into Gor- 
dian knots ; some also in female handwritings, 
carefully sealed ; others in ill-looking envelopes, 
addressed in bold, legible, clerk-like caligraphy. 
Taken altogether, these epistles had a character 
in common ; they betokened the correspondence 
of a “ viveur" — regarded from the female side as 
young, handsome, well-born ; on the male side as 
a viveur who had forgotten to pay his hosier and 
tailor. 

Louvier wrote a small, not very intelligible, 
but very masculine hand, as most men who think 
cautiously and act promptly do write. The let- 
ter ran thus : 

'•'Cher petit Marqids” (at that commencement 
Alain haughtily raised his head and bit his lips). 

‘ ‘ Cher petit Marquis, — It is an age since I have 
seen you. No doubt my humble soirees are too 
dull for a beau seigneur so courted. I forgive 
you. Would I were a beau seigneur at your 
age ! Alas ! I am only a commonplace man of 
business, growing old, too aloft from the world 
in which I dwell. You can scarcely be aware 
that I have embarked a great part of my capital 
in building speculations. There is a Rue de 
Louvier that runs its drains right through my 
purse. I am obliged to call in the moneys due 
to me. My agent informs me that I am just 
7000 louis short of the total I need — all other 
debts being paid in — and that there is a trifle 
more than 7000 louis owed to me as interest on 
my hypotheque on Rochebriant : kindly pay into 
his hands before the end of this week that sum. 
You have been too lenient to Collot, who must 
owe you more than that. Send agent to him. 
DesoM to trouble you, and am au desespoir to 
think that my own pressing necessities compel 
me to urge you to take so much trouble. Mais 
que faire ? The Rue de Louvier stops the way, 
and I must leave it to my agent to clear it. 

“Accept all my excuses, with the assurance 
of my sentiments the most cordial. 

“Paul Louvier.” 

Alain tossed the letter to De Finisterre. 
“Read that from the best fellow in the world.” 

The Chevalier laid down his cigarette and read. 
“ Diable !" he said, when he returned the letter 
and resumed the cigarette — '•‘‘Diable! Louvier 
must be much pressed for money, or he would 
not have written in this strain. What does it 
matter ? Collot owes you more than 7000 louis. 
Let your lawyer get them, and go to sleep with 
both ears on your pillow.” 

“Ah ! you think Collot can pay if he will?” 

“ foi! did not M. Gandrin tell you that 
M. Collot \vas safe to buy your wood at more 
money than any one else would give ?” 

“ Certainly,” said Alain, comforted. “ Gan- 
drin left that impression on my mind. I will 
set him on‘ the man. All will come right, I dare 
say ; but if it does not come right, what would 
Louvier do ?” 

“Louvier do?” answered Finisterre, reflect- 
ively. “ Weil, do you ask my opinion and ad- 
vice ?” 


“Earnestly, I ask.” 

“ Honestly, then, I answer. I am a little on 
the Bourse myself — most Parisians are. Lou- 
vier has made a gigantic speculation in this new 
street, and with so many other irons in the fire 
he must want all the money he can get at. I 
dare say that if you do not pay him what you 
owe, he must leave it to his agent to take steps 
for announcing the sale of Rochebriant. But he 
detests scandal ; he hates the notion of being se- 
vere ; rather than that, in spite of his difficulties, 
he will buy Rochebriant of you at a better price 
than it can command at public sale. Sell it to 
him. Appeal to him to act generously, and you 
will flatter him. You will get more than the old 
place is worth. Invest the surplus — live as you 
have done, or better — and marry an heiress. 
Morbleu! a Marquis de Rochebriant, if he were 
sixty years old, would rank high in the matri- 
monial market. The more the democrats have 
sought to impoverish titles and laugh down his- 
torical names, the more do rich democrat fathers- 
in-law seek to decorate their daughters with titles 
and give their grandchildren the heritage of his- 
torical names. You look shocked, pauvre ami. 
Let us hope, then, that Collot will pay. Set 
your dog — I mean your lawyer — at him ; seize 
him by the throat!” 

Before Alain had recovered from the stately 
silence with which he had heard this very prac- 
tical counsel the valet again appeared, and ush- 
ered in M. Frederic Lemercier. 

There was no cordial acquaintance between 
the visitors. Lemercier was chafed at finding 
himself supplanted in Alain’s intimate compan- 
ionship by so new a friend, and De Finisterre 
affected to regard Lemercier as a would-be ex- 
quisite of low birth and bad taste. Alain, too, 
was a little discomposed at the sight of Lemer- 
cier, remembering the wise cautions which that 
old college friend had wasted on him at the com- 
mencement of his Paiisian career, and smitten 
with vain remorse that the cautions had been so 
arrogantly slighted. 

It was with some timidity that he extended 
his hand to Frederic, and he was surprised as 
well as moved by the more than usual warmth 
with which it was grasped by the friend he had 
long neglected. Such affectionate greeting was 
scarcely in keeping with the pride which charac- 
terized Frederic Lemercier. 

“J/a foi!" said the Chevalier, glancing to- 
ward the clock, “ how time flies ! I had no idea 
it was so late. I must leave you now, my dear 
Rochebriant. Perhaps we shall meet at the club 
later — I dine there to day. Au plaisir, M. Le- 
mercier.” 


CHAPTER III. 

When the door had closed on the Cheva- 
lier, Frederic’s countenance became very grave. 
Drawing his chair near to Alain, he said : “We 
have not seen much of each other lately — nay, 
no excuses ; I am well aware that it could scarce- 
ly be otherwise. Paris has grown so large and 
so subdivided into sets that the best friends be- 
longing to different sets become as divided as if 
the Atlantic flowed between them. I come to- 
day in consequence of something I have just 
heard from Duplessis. Tell me, have you got 


THE PARISIANS. 


147 


the money for the wood you sold to M. Collot a 
year ago ?” 

“ No,” said Alain, falteringl 3 \ 

“Good Heavens! none of it?” 

“ Only the deposit of ten per cent., which, of 
course, I spent, for it formed the greater })art of 
my income. \Vhat of Collot? Is he really un- 
safe?” 

“ He is ruined, and has fled the country. His 
flight was the talk of the Bourse this morning. 
Duplessis told me of it.” 

Alain’s face paled. “ How is Louvier to be 
paid? Read that letter!” 

Lemercier rapidlj^ scanned his eye over the 
contents of Louvier’s letter. 

“It is true, then, that you owe this man a 
year’s interest — more than 7000 louis?” 

“Somewhat more — yes. But that is not the 
first care that troubles me — Rochebriant may be 
lost, but with it not my honor. I owe the Rus- 
sian Prince 300 louis, lost to him last night at 
ecarte. I must find a purchaser for my coupe 
and horses ; they cost me 600 louis last year — 
do you know any one who will give me three?” 

“Pooh! I will give you six; your alezan 
alone is worth half the money!” 

“ My dear Frederic, I will not sell them to you 
on any account. But you have so many friends — ” 

“ Who would give their soul to say, ‘ I bought 
these horses of Rochebriant.’ Of course I do. 
Ha ! young Rameau — you are acquainted with 
him ?” 

“ Rameau ! I never heard of him !” 

“ Vanity of vanities, then what is fame ! Ra- 
meau is the editor of Le Sens Conimun. You 
read that journal I” 

“Yes, it has clever articles, and I remember 
how I was absorbed in the eloquent roman which 
appeared in it.” 

“Ah! by the Signora Cicogna, with whom I 
think you were somewhat smitten last year.” 

“ La^t year — was I ? How a year can alter a 
man ! But my debt to the Prince. What has 
Le Sens Commun to do with my horses ?” 

“I met Rameau at Savarin’s the other even- 
ing. He was making himself out a hero and a 
martyr ; his coup^ had been taken from him to 
assist in a barricade in that senseless emeute ten 
days ago ; the coupe got smashed, the horses 
disappeared. He will buy one of your horses 
and coupe'. Leave it to me ! I know where to 
dispose of the other two horses. At what hour 
do you want the money ?” 

“ Before I go to dinner at the club !” 

“You shall have it within two hours; hut 
you must not dine at the club to-day. I have a 
note from Duplessis to invite you to dine with 
him to-day ! ” 

“ Duplessis ! I know so little of him !” 

“You should know him better. He is the 
only man who can give you sound advice as to 
this difficulty with Louvier, and he will give it 
the more carefully and zealously because he has 
that enmity to Louvier which one rival financier 
has to another. I dine with him too. We shall 
find an occasion to consult him quietly ; he speaks 
of you most kindly. What a lovely girl his daugh- 
ter is!” 

“I dare say. Ah! I wish I had been less 
absurdly fastidious. I wish 1 had entered the 
army as a private soldier six months ago ; ^ I 
should have been a corporal by this time ! Still 

L 


it is not too late. When Rochebriant is gone, I 
can yet say with the Mousquetaire in the intHo- 
drarne, ‘ I am rich — I have my honor and my 
sword ! ’ ” 

“Nonsense! Rochebriant shall be saved; 
meanwhile I hasten to Rameau. Au revoir., at 
the Hotel Duplessis — seven o’clock.” 

Lemercier went, and in less than two hours 
sent the Marquis bank-notes for 600 louis, re- 
questing an order for the delivery of the horses 
and carriage. 

That order written and signed, Alain hastened 
to acquit himself of his debt of honor, and con- 
templating his probable ruin with a lighter heart, 
presented himself at the Hotel Duplessis. 

Duplessis made no, pretensions to vie with the 
magnificent existence of Louvier. His house, 
though agreeably situated and flatteringly styled 
the Hotel Duplessis, was of moderate size, very 
unostentatiously furnished ; nor was it accus- 
tomed to receive the brilliant motley crowds 
which assembled in the salons of the elder finan- 
cier. 

Before that year, indeed, Duplessis had con- 
fined such entertainments as he gave to quiet 
men of business, or a few of the more devoted 
and loyal partisans of the imperial dynasty ; but 
since Valerie came to live with him he had ex- 
tended his hospitalities to wider and livelier cir- 
cles, including some celebrities in the world of 
art and letters as well as of fashion. Of the par- 
ty assembled that evening at dinner were Isaura, 
with the Signora Venosta, one of the imperial 
ministers, the Colonel whom Alain had already 
met at Lemercier’s supper, D^putds (ardent Im- 
perialists), and the Duchesse de Tarascon ; these, 
with Alain and Frederic, made up the party. 
I'he conversation was not particulaidy gay. 
Duplessis himself, though an exceedingly well- 
read and able man, had not the genial accom- 
jdishments of a brilliant host. Constitutionally 
grave and habitually taciturn — though there were 
moments in which he was roused out of his 
wonted self into eloquence or wit — he seemed 
to-day absorbed in some engrossing train of 
thought. The minister, the Deputes., and the 
Duchesse de Tarascon talked politics^ and ridi- 
culed the trumpery emeute of the 14th; exulted 
in the success of the Fle'biscite ; and admitting, 
with indignation, the growing strength of Prus- 
sia — and with scarcely less indignation, hut more 
contempt, censuring the selfish egotism of En- 
gland in disregarding the due equilibrium of the 
European balance of power — hinted at the ne- 
cessity of annexing Belgium as a set-off’ against 
the results of Sadowa. 

Alain found himself seated next to Isaura — to 
the woman who had so captivated his eye and 
fancy on his first arrival in Paris. 

Remembering his last conversation with Gra- 
ham nearly a year ago, he felt some curiosity to 
ascertain whetlier the rich Englishman had pro- 
posed to her, and if so, been refused or accepted. 

The first words that passed between them were 
trite enough, but after a little pause in the talk, 
Alain said : 

“ I think mademoiselle and myself have an 
acquaintance in common — Monsieur Vane, a 
distinguished Englishman. Do you know if he 
be in Paris at present ? I have not seen him for 
many months.” 

“ I believe he is in London : at least Colonel 


U8 


THE PARISIANS. 


Mnrley met, the other day, a friend of his who 
said so.” 

Though Isaura strove to speak in a tone of in- 
difterence, Alain’s ear detected a ring of pain in 
her voice; and watching her countenance, he 
was impressed with a saddened change in its 
expression. He was touched, and his curiosity 
was mingled with a gentler interest as he said, 
“ When I last saw M. Vane I should have judged 
him to be too much under the spell of an enchant- 
ress to remain long without the pale of the circle 
she draws around her.” 

Isaura turned her face quickly toward the 
speaker, and her lips moved, but she said noth- 
ing audibly. 

“ Can there have been quarrel or misunder- 
standing?” thought Alain;' and after that ques- 
tion his heart asked itself, “Supposing Isaura 
were free, her affections disengaged, could he 
wish to woo and to win her ?” and his heart an- 
swered, “ Eighteen months ago thou wert nearer 
to her than now. Thou wert removed from her 
forever when thou didst accept the world as a 
barrier between you ; then, poor as thou wert, 
thou wouldst have preferred her to riches. Thou 
wert then sensible only of the ingenuous impulses 
of youth ; but the moment thou saidst, ‘ I am 
Rochebriant, and having once owned the claims 
of birth and station, I can not renounce them 
for love,’ Isaura became but a dream. Now 
that ruin stares thee in the face — now tliat thou 
must grapple with the sternest difficulties of ad- 
verse fate — thou hast lost the poetry of senti- 
ment which could alone give to that dream the 
colors and the form of human life.” ’ He could 
not again think of that fair creature as a prize 
that he might even dare to covet. And as he 
met her inquiring eyes, and saw her quivering 
lip, he felt instinctively that Graham was dear 
to her, and that the tender interest with which 
she inspired himself was untroubled by one pang 
of jealousy. He resumed : 

“ Yes, the last time I saw the Englishman he 
spoke with such respectful homage of one lady, 
whose hand he would deem it the highest reward 
of ambition to secure, that I can not but feel deep 
compassion for him if that ambition has been 
foiled ; and thus only do I account for his ab- 
sence from Paris.” 

“You are an intimate friend of Mr. Vane’s ?” 

“No, indeed, I have not that honor; our ac- 
quaintance is but slight, but it impressed me 
with the idea of a man of vigorous intellect, 
frank temper, and perfect honor. ” 

Isaura’s face brightened with the joy we feel 
when we hear the praise of those we love. 

At this moment Duplessis, who had been ob- 
serving the Italian and the young Marquis, for 
the first time during dinner, broke silence. 

Mademoiselle^" said, addi’essing Isaura 
across the table, “I hope I have not been cor- 
rectly informed that your literary triumph has^ 
induced you to forego the career in which all 
the best judges concur that your successes would 
be no less brilliant ; surely one art does not ex- 
clude another.” 

Elated by Alain’s report of Graham’s words,* 
by the conviction that these words applied, to 
herself, and by the thought that her renunciation 
of the stage removed a barrier between them, 
Isaura answered, with a sort of enthusiasm : 

“I know not, M. Duplessis, if one art ex- 


cludes another — if there be desire to excel in 
each. But I have long I6st all desire to excel 
in the art you refer to, and resigned ail idea of 
the career in which it opens.” 

“So M. Vane told me,” said Alain, in a whis- 
per. 

“ When ?” 

“Last year, on the day that he spoke in 
terms of admiration so merited of the lady 
whom M. Duplessis has just had the honor to 
address.” 

All this while Valdrie, who was seated at the 
further end of the table beside the minister, who 
had taken her in to dinner, had been watching, 
with eyes the anxious tearful sorrow of which 
none but her father had noticed, the low-voiced 
confidence between Alain and the friend whom 
till that day she had so enthusiastically loved. 
Hitherto she had been answering in monosylla- 
bles all attempts of the great man to draw her 
into conversation ; but now, observing how Isau- 
ra blushed and looked down, that strange fac- 
ulty in women which we men call dissimulation, 
and which in them is truthfulness to their own 
nature, enabled her to carry oft' the sharpest an- 
guish she had ever experienced by a sudden 
burst of levity of spirit. She caught up some 
commonplace the minister had adapted to what 
he considered the poverty of her understanding 
with a quickness of satire which startled that 
grave man, and he gazed at her astonislied. U{) 
to that moment he had secretly admired her as 
a girl well brought up — as girls fresh from a 
French convent are supposed to be ; now, hear- 
ing her brilliaTit rejoinder to his stupid observa- 
tion, he said, inly, “Z>ame/ the low birth of a 
financier’s daughter shows itself.” 

But, being a clever man himself, her retort 
put him on his mettle, and he became, to his 
own amazement, brilliant himself. With that 
matchless quickness which belongs to Parisians, 
the guests around him seized the new esprit de 
conversation which had been evoked between 
the statesman and the child-like girl beside him ; 
and as they caught up the ball, lightly flung 
among them, they thought within themselves 
how much more sparkling the financier’s pretty, 
lively daughter was than that dark-eyed young 
muse, of whom all the journalists of Paris were 
writing in a chorus of welcome and applause, 
and who seemed not to have a word to say 
worth listening to, excepting to the handsome 
young Marquis, whom, no doubt, she wished to 
fascinate. 

Valerie fairly outshone Isaura in intellect and 
in wit; and neither Valerie nor Isaura cared, to 
the valub of a bean straw, about that distinction. 
Each was thinking only of the prize which the 
humblest peasant women have in common with 
the most brilliantly accomplished of their sex — 
the heart of a man beloved. 


CHAPTER IV. 

On the Continent generally, as we all know, 
men do not sit drinking wine together after the 
ladies retire. So when the signal was given, all 
the guests adjourned to the salon, and Alain 
quitted Isaura to gain the ear of the Duchesse de 
Tarascon. 


THE PARISIANS. 


149 


‘‘ It is long — at least long for Paris life,” said 
the Marquis, “since my first visit to you, in 
company with Enguerrand de Vandemar." Much 
that you then said rested on my mind, disturb- 
ing the prejudices I took from Bretagne.” 

“ 1 am proud to hear it, my kinsman.” 

“You know that I would have taken military 
service under the Emperor but for the regula- 
tion which would have compelled me to enter 
the ranks as a private soldier.” 

“ 1 sympathize with that scruple ; but you are 
aware that the Emperor himself could not have 
ventured to make an exception even in vour fa- 
vor. ” 

“Certainly not. I repent me of my pride; 
perhaps I may enlist still in some regiment sent 
to Algiers.” 

“ No ; there are other ways in which a Roche- 
briant can serve a throne. There will be an of- 
fice at court vacant soon, which would not mis- 
become your birth.” 

“Pardon me — a soldier serves his country, a 
courtier owns a master ; and I can not take the 
livery of the himperor, though I could wear the 
uniform of Prance.” 

“Your distinction is childish, my kinsman,” 
said the Duchesse, impetuously. “You talk as 
if the Emperor had an interest apart from the 
nation. I tell you that he has not a corner of 
his heart — not even one reserved for his son and 
his dynasty — in which the thought of Prance 
does not predominate.” 

“I do not presume, Madame la Duchesse^ to 
question the truth of what you say ; but I have 
no reason to suppose that the same thought does 
not predominate in the heart of the Bourbon. 
The Bourbon would be the first to say to me, 

‘ If Prance needs your sword against her foes, 
let it not rest in the scabbard.’ But would the 
Bourbon say, ‘ The place of a Rochebriant is 
among the Valetaille of the Corsican’s suc- 
cessor ?’ ” 

“ Alas for poor France !” said the Duchesse ; 
“and alas for men like you, my proud cousin, 
if the Corsican’s successors or successor be — ” 

“ Heniy V. ?” interrupted Alain, with a 
brightening eye. 

“Dreamer! No! Some descendant of the 
mob-kings who gave Bourbons and nobles to 
the guillotine." 

While the Duchesse and Alain were thus con- 
versing, Isaura had seated herself by Valerie, 
and, unconscious of the offense she had given, 
addressed her in those pretty caressing terms 
with which young lady friends are wont to com- 
pliment each other; but Valerie answered curt- 
ly or sarcastically, and turned aside to converse 
with the minister. A few minutes more and the 
party began to break up. Lemercier, however, 
detained Alain, whispering, “Duplessis will see 
us on your business so soon as the other guests 
have gone. ” 


CHAPTER V. 

“Monsieur le Marquis,” said Duplessis, 
when the salon was cleared of all but himself 
and the two friends, “Lemercier has confided 
to me the state of your affairs in connection with 
M. Louvier, and flatters me by thinking my ad- 
vice may be of some service ; if so, command me.” 


“I shall most gratefully accept your advice,” 
answered Alain, “ but I fear my condition defies 
even your ability and skill.” 

“Permit me to hope not, and to ask a few 
necessary questions. M. Louvier has constituted 
himself your sole mortgagee ; to what amount, at 
what interest, and from what annual proceeds is 
the interest paid ?” 

Herewith Alain gave details already furnish- 
ed to the reader. Duplessis listened, and noted 
down the replies. 

“ I see it all,” he said, when Alain had finish- 
ed. “ M. Louvier had predetermined to possess 
himself of your estate : he makes himself sole 
mortgagee at a rate of interest so low that I tell 
you fairly, at the pi esent value of money, I doubt 
if you could find any capitalist who would ac- 
cept the transfer of the mortgage at the same 
rate. This is not like Louvier, unless he had an 
object to gain ; and that object is your land. 
The revenue from your estate is derived chiefly 
from wood, out of which the interest due to Lou- 
vier is to be j)aid. M. Gandrin, in a skillfully 
guarded letter, encourages you to sell the wood 
from your forests to a man who offers you sever- 
al thousand francs more than it could command 
from customary buyers. I say nothing against 
M. Gandrin ; but every man who knows Paris as 
1 do knows that M. Louvier can put, ahd has 
put, a great deal of money into M. Gandrin’s 
pocket, 'i’he purchaser of your wood does not 
pay more than his deposit, and has just left the 
country insolvent. Your purchaser, M. Collot, 
was an adventurous speculator ; he would have 
bought any thing at any pnce, provided he had 
time to pay ; if his speculations had been lucky, 
he would have paid. M. Louvier knew, as I 
knew, that M. Collot was a gambler, and the 
chances were that he would not pay. M. Lou- 
vier allows a year's interest on his hypotheque to 
become due — notice thereof duly given to you by 
his agent — now you come under the operation of 
the law. Of course you know what the law is ? ’ 

“Not exactly,” answered Alain, feeling frost- 
bitten by the congealing words of his counselor ; 
“ but I take it for granted that if I can not pay 
the interest of a sum borrowed on my property, 
that property itself is forfeited.” 

“ No, not quite that — the law is mild. If the 
interest, which should be paid half yearly, remains 
unpaid at the end of a year, the mortgagee has a 
right to be impatient, has he not ?” 

“Certainly he has.” 

“Well, then, on fait un commandement tendant 
a saisie immohiliere — viz., the mortgagee gives a 
notice that the property shall be put up for sale. 
Then it is put up for sale, and in most cases the 
mortgagee buys it in. Here, certainly, no com- 
petitors in the mere business way would vie with 
Louvier; the mortgage at three and a half per 
cent, covers more than the estate is apparently 
worth. Ah ! but stop, M. le Marquis ; the no- 
tice is not yet served ; the whole process would 
take six months from the day it is served to the 
taking possession after the sale ; in the mean 
while, if you pay the interest due, the action 
drops. Courage^ M. le Marquis ! Hope yet, if 
you condescend to call me friend.” 

“And me,” ciied Lemercier; “I will sell 
out of my railway shares to-morrow — see to it 
Duplessis — enough to pay off the damnable inter- 
est. See to it, mon ami." 


150 


THE PARISIANS. 


“Agree to that, M. le Marquis, and you are 
safe for another year,” said Duplessis, folding 
up the paper on which he iiad made his notes, 
but fixing on Alain quiet eyes half concealed 
under drooping lids. 

“Agree to that!” cried Rochebriant, rising — 
“agree to allow even my worst enemy to pay 
for me moneys I could never hope to repay — 
agree to allow the oldest and most confiding of 
my friends to do so — M. Duplessis, never! If 
I carried the porter’s knot of an Auvergnat, I 
should still remain gentiUwvivie and Breton." 

Duplessis, habitually the dryest of men, rose 
with a moistened eye and flushing cheek. “ Mon- 
sieur le Marquis, vouchsafe me the honor to 
shake hands with you. I, too, am by descent 
gentilhomme^ by profession a speculator on the 
Bourse. In both capacities I approve the sen- 
timent you have uttered. Certainly if our friend 
Frederic lent you 7000 louis or so this year, it 
would be impossible for you even to foresee the 
year in wliich you could repay it; but,” here 
Duplessis paused a minute, and then lowering 
the tone of his voice, which had been somewhat 
vehement and enthusiastic, into that of a collo- 
quial good fellowship, equally rare to the meas- 
ured reserve of the financier, he asked, with a 
lively twinkle of his gray ej'e, “did you never 
hear, Marquis, of a little encounter between me. 
and M. Louvier?” 

“Encounter at arms — does Louvier fight?” 
asked Alain, innocently. 

“In his own way he is always fighting; but 
I speak metaphorically. You see this small 1 
house of mine — so pinched in by the houses 
next to it tliat I can neither get space for a 
ball-room for Valerie, nor a dining-room for 
more than a friendly party like that which has 
honored me to-day. Eh bien! I bought this 
house a few years ago, meaning to buy the one 
next to it, and throw the two into one. I went 
to the proprietor of the next house, who, as I 
knew, wished to sell. ‘ Aha !’ he thought, ‘ this 
is the rich Monsieur Duplessis ;’ and he asked 
me 2000 louis more than the house was worth. 
We men of business can not bear to be too much 
cheated — a little cheating we submit to, much 
cheating raises our gall. Bref — this was on 
Monday. I offered the man one thousand louis 
above the fair price, and gave him till Thursday 
to decide. Somehow or other Louvier hears of 
this. ‘Hillo!’ says Louvier; ‘hei'e is a finan- 
cier who desires a hotel to vie with mine!’ He 
goes on Wednesday to my next-door neighbor. 
‘Friend, you want to sell your house. I want 
to buy — the price?’ The proprietor, who does 
not know him by sight, says, ‘It is as good as 
sold. M. Duplessis and I shall agree.’ ‘Bah! j 
What sum did you ask M. Duplessis?’ He 
names the sum — 2000 louis more than he can 
get elsewhere. ‘ But M. Duplessis will give me 
the sum.’ ‘You asked too little. I will give 
you three thousand. A fig for M. Duplessis ! 

1 am Monsieur Louvier.’ So when I call on 
Thursday the house is sold. I reconciled my- 
self easily enough to the loss of space for a lar- 
ger dining-room ; but though Valerie was then 
a child at a convent, I was sadly disconcerted by 
the thought that I could have no salle de hal 
ready for her when she came to reside with me. 
Well, I sa}' to myself, patience ; L owe M. Lou- 
vier a good turn ; my time to pay him off will 


come. It does come, and ver;^ soon. M. Lou- 
vier buys an estate near Baris — builds a superb 
villa. Close to his property is a rising forest 
ground for sale. He goes to tlie proprietor. ISays 
the jjroprietor to himself, ‘The great Louvier 
wants this,’ and adds five thousand louis to its 
market price. Louvier, like myself, can’t bear 
to be cheated egregiously. Louvier offers 2000 
louis more than the man could fairly get, and 
leaves him till Saturday to consider. I hear of 
this — speculators hear of every thing. On Fri- 
day night I go to the man and I give him 6000 
louis, where he had asked 5000. Fancy Lou- 
vier’s face the next day ! But there my revenge 
only begins,” continued Duplessis, chuckling in- 
wardly. “My forest looks down on the villa he 
is building. I only wait till his villa is built, in 
order to send to my architect and say, ‘ Build me 
a villa at least twice as grand as M. Louvier’s, 
then clear away the forest trees, so that every 
morning he may see my jjalace dwarfing into 
insignificance his own.’” 

“Bravo!” cried Lemercier, clapping his hands. 
Lemercier had the spirit of party, and felt for 
Duplessis against Louvier much as in England 
Whig feels against Tory, or vice versa. 

“Perhaps now,” resumed Duplessis, more so- 
berly — “perhaps now, M. le Marquis, you may 
understand why I humiliate you by no sense of 
obligation if I say that M. Louvier shall not be 
the Seigneur de Rochebriant if I can help it. 
Give me a line of introduction to 3 mur Breton 
lawyer and to mademoiselle your aunt. Let me 
have your letters early to-morrow\ I will take 
the afternoon train. 1 know not how many days 
I may be absent, but I shall not return till I 
have carefully examined the nature and condi- 
tions of your property. If I see my way to save 
your estate, and give a viauvais quart d'heure to 
Louvier, so much the better for you, M. le Mar- 
quis ; if I can not, I will say, frankly’, ‘ Make the 
best terms j’ou can with your cieditor.’” 

“Nothing can be more delicately generous 
than the way you put it,” said Alain ; “but 
pardon me if I say that the pleasantry with 
which you narrate your grudge against M. Lou- 
vier does not answer its purpose in diminishing 
my sense of obligation.” So, linking his arm 
in Lemerqier’s, Alain made his bow and with- 
drew. 

When his guests had gone, Duplessis remain- 
ed seated in meditation — apparently pleasant 
meditation, for he smiled while indulging it ; he 
then passed through the recejjtion-rooms to one 
at the far end, appropriated to Valerie as a bou- 
doir or morning-room, adjoining her bed-cham- 
j ber ; he knocked gently at the door, and all re- 
j maining silent within, he opened it noiselessly 
and entered, Valerie was reclining on the sofa 
near the window, her head drooping, her hands 
clasped on her knees. Duplessis neared her with 
tender, stealthy steps, passed his arm round her, 
and drew her head toward his bosom. “Child !” 
he murmured, “ my child ! my only one !” 

At that soft loving voice, Valerie flung her 
arms round him, and wept aloud like an infant 
in trouble. He seated himself beside her, and 
wisely suffered her to weep on till her passion 
had exhausted itself ; he then said, half fondly, 
half chidingly: “Have you forgotten our con- 
versation only three days ago? Have you for- 
gotten that I then drew forth the secret of your , 



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1 







THE PARISIANS. 


lol 


heart ? Have you forgotten what I promised 
you in return for your confidence ? And a prom- 
ise to you have I ever yet broken ?” 

“Father! father! I am so wretched, and so 
ashamed of myself for being wretched! For- 
give me. No, I do not forget your promise, but 
who can promise to dispose of the heart of an- 
other ? — and that heart will never be mine. But 
bear with me a little; I shall soon recover.” 

“Valerie, when I made you the promise you 
now think I can not keep, I spoke only from 
that conviction of power to promote the happi- 
ness of a child which nature implants in the 
heart of parents; and it may be also from the 
experience of my own strength of will, since 
that which I have willed I have always won. 
Now I speak on yet surer ground. Before the 
year is out you shall be the beloved wife of 
Alain de Rochebriant. Dry your tears and 
smile on me, Valerie. If you will not see in 
me mother and father both, I have double love 
for you, motherless child of her who shared the 
poverty of my youth, and did not live to enjoy 
the wealth which I hold as a trust for that heir 
to mine all which she left me.” 

As this man thus spoke you would scarcely 




have recognized in him the cold saturnine Du- 
plessis, his countenance became so beautified by 
the one soft feeling which care and contest, am- 
bition and money-seeking, had left unaltered in 
his heart. Perhaps there is no country in which 
the love of parent and child, especially of father 
and daughter, is so strong as it is in France ; 
even in the most arid soil, among the avaricious, 
even among the profligate, it forces itself into 
flower. Other loves fade away in the heart of 
the true Frenchman, that parent love blooms to 
the last. 

Valerie felt the presence of that love as a di- 
vine protecting guardianship. She sank on her 
knees and covered his hand with grateful kisses. 

“ Do not torture yourself, my child, with 
jealous fears of the fair Italian. Her lot and 
Alain de Rochebriant’s can never unite; and 
w hatever you may think of their whispered con- 
verse, Alain’s heart, at this moment, is too filled 
with anxious troubles to leave one spot in it ac- 
cessible even to a frivolous gallantry. It is for 
us to remove these troubles ; and then, when he 
turns his eyes toward you, it will be with the 
gaze of one w'ho beholds his happiness. You do 
not weep now, Valerie!” 


BOOK NINTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

On w'aking some morning, have you ever felt, 
reader, as if a change for the brighter in the 
world, without and within you, had suddenly 
come to pass — some new glory has been given to 
the sunshine, some fresh balm to the air — you 
feel younger and happier and lighter in the very 
beat of your heart — you almost fancy you hear 
the chime of some spiritual music far off, as if 
in the deeps of heaven ? You are not at first 
conscious how, or wherefore, this change has 
been brought about. Is it the effect of a dream 
in the gone sleep that has made this morning so 
different from mornings that have dawned be- 
fore? And while vaguely asking yourself that 
question you become aware that the cause is no 
mere illusion, that it has its substance in words 
spoken by living lips, in things that belong to 
the w'ork-day world. 

It was thus that Isaura woke the morning aft- 
ter the conversation with Alain de Rochebriant, 
and as certain words, then spoken, echoed back 
on her ear, she knew w'hy she was so happy, why 
the world was so changed. 

In those words she heard the voice of Graham 
Vane — no, she had not deceived herself — she 
was loved ! she was loved ! What mattered that 
long cold interval of absence ? She had not for- 
gotten — she could not believe that absence had 
brought forgetfulness. There are moments when 
we insist on judging another’s heart by our own. 
All would be explained some day — all would 
come right. 

How lovely was the face that reflected itself 
in the glass as she stood before it smoothing 
back her long hair, murmuring sweet snatches 
of Italian love-song, and blushing with sweeter 
love-thoughts as she sang ! All that had passed 


in that year so critical to her outer life — the au- 
thorship, the fame, the public career, the popular 
praise — vanished from her mind as a vapor that 
rolls from the face of a lake to which the sun- 
light restores the smile of a brightened heaven. 

She was more the girl now than she had ever 
been since the day on which she sat reading Tas- 
so on the craggy shore of Sorrento. 

Singing still as she passed from her chamber, 
and entering the sitting-room, which fronted the 
east, and seemed bathed in the sunbeams of deep- 
ening May, she took her bird from its cage, and 
stopped her song to cover it with kisses, 'which 
perhaps yearned for vent somewhere. 

Later in the day she went out to visit Vale- 
rie. Recalling the altered manner of her young 
friend, her sweet nature became troubled. She 
divined that Valerie had conceived some jealous 
pain, which she longed to heal ; she could not 
bear the thought of leaving any one that day un- 
happy. Ignorant before of the girl’s feelings to- 
ward Alain, she now partly guessed them — one 
woman who loves in secret is clairvoyante as to 
such secrets in another. 

Valerie received her visitor with a coldness 
she did not attempt to disguise. Not seeming to 
notice this, Isaura commenced the conversation 
with frank mention of Rochebnant. “I have 
to thank you so much, dear Valerie, for a pleas- 
ure you could not anticipate — that of talking 
about an absent friend, and hearing the praise he 
deserved from one so capable of appreciating ex- 
cellence as M, de Rochebriant appears to be.” 

“You were talking to M. de Rochebriant of 
an absent friend — ah ! you seemed indeed very 
much interested in the conversation — ” 

“ Do not wonder at that, Valerie; and do not 
grudge me the happiest moments I have known 
for months.” 


152 


THE PARISIANS. 


9 


“In talking with M. de Rochebriant! No 
doubt, Mademoiselle Cicogna, you found him 
very charming.” 

To her surprise and indignation, Valerie here 
felt the arm of Isaura tenderly entwining her 
waist, and her face drawn toward Isaui-a’s sister- 
ly kiss. 

“ Listen to me, naughty child — listen and be- 
lieve. M. de Rochebriant can never be charm- 
ing to me — never touch a chord in my heart or 
my fancy, except as friend to another, or — kiss 
me in your turn, Valerie — as suitor to yourself.” 

Valerie here drew back her pretty child-like 
head, gazed keenly a moment into Isaura’seyes, 
felt convinced by the limpid candor of their un- 
mistakable honesty, and flinging herself on her 
friend’s bosom, kissed her passionately, and burst 
into tears. 

The complete reconciliation between the two 
girls was thus peacefully etfected ; and then Isau- 
ra had to listen, at no small length, to the confi- 
dences poured into her ears by Valerie, who was 
fortunately too engrossed by her own hopes and 
doubts to exact confidences in return. Vale- 
rie’s was one of those impulsive, eager natures 
that long for a confidante. Not so Isaura's. 
Only when Valerie had unburdened her heart, 
and been soothed and caressed into happy trust 
in the future, did she recall Isaura’s explanato- 
ry words, and said, archly, “ And your absent 
friend? Tell me about him. Is he as hand- 
some as Alain ?” 

“ Nay,” said Isaura, rising to take up the man- 
tle and hat she had laid aside on entering, “they 
say that the color of a flower is in our vision, not 
in the leaves.” Then, with a grave melancholy 
in the look she fixed upon Valerie, she added : 
“ Rather than distrust of me should occasion you 
pain, I have pained myself in making clear to 
you the reason why I felt interest in M. de Roche- 
briant’s conversation. In turn, I ask of you a 
fiwor — do not on this point question me farther. 
There are some things in our past which influ- 
ence the present, but to which we dare not as- 
.sign a future — on which we can not talk to an- 
other. What soothsayer can tell us if the dream 
of a yesterday will be renewed on the night of a 
morrow? All is said — we trust one another, 
dearest. ” 


CHAPTER II. 

That evening the Morleys looked in at Isau- 
ra’s on their way to a crowded assembly at the 
house of one of those rich Americans who were 
then outvying the English residents at Paris in 
the good graces of Parisian society. I think the 
Americans get on better with the French than 
the English do — I mean the higher class of 
Americans. They spend more money; their 
men speak French better ; the women are bet- 
ter dressed, and, as a general rule, have read 
more largely, and converse more frankly. 

Mrs. iVIorley’s affection for Isaura had increased 
during the last few months. As so notable an 
advocate of the ascendency of her sex, she felt | 
a sort of grateful pride in the accomplishments 
and growing renown of so youthful a member 
of the oppressed sisterhood. But, apart from 
that sentiment, she had conceived a tender moth- 
er-like interest for the girl who stood in the 


world so utterly devoid of family ties, so desti - 
tute of that household guardianship and protec- 
tion which, with all her assertion of the strength 
and dignity of woman, and all her opinions as 
to woman’s right of absolute emancipation from 
the conventions fabricated by the selfishness of 
man, Mrs. Morley was too sensible not to val- 
ue for the individual, though she deemed it not 
needed for the mass. Her great desire was that 
Isaura should marry well, and soon. American 
women usually marry so young that it seemed to 
Mrs. Morley an anomaly in social life that one 
so gifted in mind and person as Isaura should 
already have passed the age in which the belles 
of the great Republic are enthroned as wives and 
consecrated as mothers. 

We have seen that in the past year she had 
selected from our unworthy but necessary sex 
Graham Vane as a suitable spouse to her young 
friend. She had divined the state of his heart 
— she had more than suspicions of the state of 
Isaura’s. She was exceedingly perplexed and 
exceedingly chafed at the Englishman’s strange 
disregard to his happiness and her own projects. 
She had counted, all this past winter, on his re- 
turn to Paris ; and she became convinced that 
some misunderstanding, possibly some lovers’ 
quarrel, was the cause of his protracted absence, 
and a cause that, if ascertained, could be re- 
moved. A good opportunity now presented it- 
self — Colonel Morley was going to London the 
next day. He had business there which would 
detain him at least a week. He would see Gra- 
ham ; and as she considered hei’ husband the 
shrewdest and wisest person in the world — I 
mean of the male sex — she had no doubt of his 
being able to turn Graham’s mind thoroughly in- 
side out, and ascertain his exact feelings, views, 
and intentions. If the Englishman, thus assay- 
ed, were found of base metal, then, at least, Mrs. 
Morley would be free to cast him altogether 
aside, and coin for the uses of the matrimonial 
market some nobler effigy in purer gold. 

“ My dear child,” said Mrs. Morley, in low 
voice, nestling herself close to Isaura, while the 
Colonel, duly instructed, drew off the Venosta, 
“ have you heard any thing lately of our pleasant 
friend Mr. Vane?” 

You can guess with what artful design Mrs. 
Morley put that question point-blank, fixing 
keen eyes on Isaura while she put it. She saw 
the heightened color, the quivering lip, of the 
girl thus abruptly appealed to, and she said, inly, 
“I was right — she loves him!” 

“I heard of Mr. Vane last night — accident- 
ally.” 

“Is he coming to Paris soon ?” 

“Not that I know of. How charmingly that 
wreath becomes you ! It suits the ear-rings so 
well too. ” 

“ Frank chose it ; he has good taste for a man. 

I trust him with my commissions to Hunt and 
Roskell’s, but I limit him as to price, he is so ex- 
ti-avagant — men are, when they make presents. 
They seem to think we value things according 
to their cost. They would gorge us with jewels, 

I and let us starve for want of a smile. Not that 
Frank is so bad as the rest of them. But a pro- 
pos of Mr. Vane — Frank will be sure to see him, 
and scold him well for deserting us all. I should 
not be surprised if he brought the deserter back 
with him, for I send a little note by Frank, in- 


153 


THE PARISIANS. 


viting him to pay us a visit. We have spare 
rooms in our apartments.” 

Isaura’s heart heaved beneath her robe, but 
she replied in a tone of astonisliing indifference : 
“I believe this is the height of the London sea- 
son, and Mr. Vane would probably be too en- 
gaged to profit even by an invitation so tempting.” 

“iVbiis verrons. How pleased he will be to 
hear of your triumphs ! He admired you so 
much before you were famous — what will be his 
admiration now ! Men are so vain — they care 
for us so much more when people praise us. But, 
till we have put the creatures in their proper 
place, we must take them for what they are.” 

Here the Venosta, with whom the poor Col- 
onel had exhausted all the arts at his command 
for chaining her attention, could be no longer 
withheld from approaching Mrs. Morley, and 
venting her admiration of that lady’s wreath, 
ear-rings, robes, flounces. This dazzling appa- 
rition had on her the effect which a candle has 
on a moth' — she fluttered round it, and longed to 
absorb herself in its blaze. But the wreath es- 
pecially fascinated her — a wreath which no pru- 
dent lady with colorings less pure, and features 
less exquisitely delicate than the pretty champi- 
on of the rights of woman, could have fancied 
on her own brows without a shudder. But the 
Venosta in such matters was not prudent. “It 
can’t be, dear,” she cried, piteously, extending 
her arms toward Isaura. ‘ ‘ I must have one ex- 
actly like. Who made it ? Cara signora^ give 
me the address.” 

“Ask the Colonel, dear madame ; he chose 
and brought it;” and Mrs. Morley glanced signif- 
icantly at her well-tutored Frank. 

“ Madame,” said the Colonel, speaking in En- 
glish, which he usually did with the Venosta, 
who valued herself on knowing that language, 
and was flattered to be addressed in it, while 
he amused himself by introducing into its forms 
the dainty Americanisms with which he puzzled 
the Britisher — he might well puzzle the Floren- 
tine — “Madame, I am too anxious for the ap- 
pearance of my wife to submit to the test of a 
rival screamer like yourself in the same apparel. 
With all the homage due to a sex of which I am 
enthused dreadful, I decline to designate the 
florist from whom I purchased Mrs. Morley s 
head fixings.” 

“Wicked man!” cried the Venosta, shaking 
her Anger at him coquettishly. “ You are jeal- 
ous ! Fie ! a man should never be jealous of a 
woman’s rivalry with woman and then, with a 
cynicism that might have become a gray-beard, 
she added, “but of his own sex every man should 
be jealous — though of his dearest friend. Isn’t 
‘ it so, Qolonello ?" 

The Colonel looked puzzled, bowed, and made 
no reply. 

“That only shows,” said Mrs. Morley, rising, 
“what villains the Colonel has the misfortune to 
call friends and fellow-men.” 

“ I fear it is time to go,” said Frank, glan- 
cing at the clock. 

In theory the most rebellious, in practice the 
most obedient of wives, Mrs. Morley here kissed 
Isaura, resettled her crinoline, and shaking hands 
with the Venosta, retreated to the door. 

“I shall have the wreath yet,” cried the Ve- 
nosta, impishly. “Xa speranza e femmina" (hope 
is female). 


“Alas!” said Isaura, half mournfully, half 
smiling — “ alas ! do you not remember what the 
poet replied when asked what disease was most 
mortal ? — the hectic fever caught from the chill 
of hope.’” 


CHAPTER III. 

Graham Vane was musing very gloomily in 
his solitary apartment one morning, when his 
servant announced Colonel Morley. 

He received his visitor with more than the 
cordiality with which every English polirician 
receives an American citizen. Graham liked 
the Colonel too well for what he was in himself 
to need any national title to his esteem. After 
some preliminary questions and answers as to 
the health of Mrs. Morley, the length of the Col- 
onel’s stay in London, what day he could dine 
with Graham at Richmond or Gravesend, the 
Colonel took up the ball. “We have been reck- 
oning to see you at Paris, Sir, for the last six 
months.” 

“I am very much flattered to hear that you 
have thought of me at all ; but I am not aware 
of having warranted the expectation you so kind- 
ly express.” 

“ I guess you must have said something to my 
wife which led her to do more than expect — to 
reckon on your return. And, by-the-way, Sir, I 
am charged to deliver to you this note from her, 
and to back the request it contains that you will 
avail yourself of the ofter. Without summariz- 
ing the points, I do so.” 

Graham glanced over the note addressed to 
him : 

“Dear Mr. Vane, — Do you forget how beau- 
tiful the environs of Paris are in May and June? 
how charming it was last year at the lake of 
Enghien ? how gay were our little dinners out- 
of-doors in the garden arbors, with the Savarins 
and the fair Italian, and her incomparably amus- 
ing chaperon? Frank has my orders to bring 
you back to renew those happy days, while the 
birds are in their first song, and the leaves are 
in their youngest green. I have prepared your 
rooms chez nous — a chamber that looks out on 
the Champs Elysees, and a quiet cabinet de tra- 
vail at the back, in which you can read, write, 
or sulk undisturbed. Come, and we will again 
visit Enghien and Montmorency. Don’t talk 
of engagements. If man proposes, woman dis- 
poses. Hesitate not — gbey. Your sincere little 
friend, Lizzy.” 

“My dear Morley,” said Graham, with emo- 
tion, “I can not find words to thank your wife 
sufficiently for an invitation so graciously con- 
veyed. Alas! I can not accept it.” 

“ Why ?” asked the Colonel, dryly. 

“I have too much to do in London.” 

“Is that the true reason, or am I to suspi- 
cion that there is any thing. Sir, which makes 
you dislike a visit to Paris ?” 

The Americans enjoy the reputation of being 
the frankest putters of questions whom liberty of 
speech has yet educated into les recherches de la 
verit^^ and certainly Colonel Morley in this in- 
stance did not impair the national reputation. 

Graham Vane’s brow slightly contracted, and 


154 


THE PARISIANS. 


he bit his Up as if stung hy a sudden pang ; but 
after a moment’s pause he answered, with a good- 
humored smile, 

“ No man who has taste enough to admire the 
most l)eautiful city, and appreciate the charms 
of the most brilliant society in the world, can 
dislike Paris.” 

“My dear Sir, I did not ask if you disliked 
Paris, but if there were any thing that made you 
dislike coming back to it on a visit.” 

“ What a notion ! and w'hat a cross-examiner 
you would have made if you had been called to 
the bar ! Surely, my dear friend, you can under- 
stand that when a man has in one place business 
which he can not neglect, he may decline going 
to another place, whatever pleasure it would give 
him to do so. By-the-way, there is a great ball 
at one of the Ministers’ to-night ; you should go 
there, and I will point out to you all those En- 
glish notabilities in whom Americans naturally 
take interest. I will call for you at eleven 

o’clock. Lord , who is a connection of 

mine, would be charmed to know you.” 

Morley hesitated ; but when Graham said, 
“ How your wife will scold you if you lose such 
an opportunity of telling her whether the Duch- 
ess of M is as beautiful as report says, and 

whether Gladstone or Disraeli seems to your 
j)hrenological science to have the finer head!” 
the Colonel gave in, and it was settled that Gra- 
ham should call for him at the Langham Hotel. 

That matter arranged, Graham probably hoped 
that his inquisitive visitor would take leave for 
the present, but the Colonel evinced no such in- 
tention. On the contrary, settling himself more 
at ease in his arm-chair, he said, “ If I remem- 
ber aright, you do not object to the odor of to- 
bacco ?” 

Graham rose and presented to his visitor a ci- 
gar-box which he took from the mantel-piece. 

The Colonel shook his head, and withdrew 
from his breast pocket a leather case, from which 
he extracted a gigantic regalia ; this he lighted 
from a gold match-box in the shape of a locket 
attached to his watch-chain, and took two or 
three preliminary puffs, with his head thrown 
back and his eyes meditatively intent upon the 
ceiling. 

We know already that strange whim of the 
Colonel’s (than whom, if he pleased, no man 
could speak purer English as spoken by the Brit- 
isher) to assert the dignity of the American citi- 
zen by copious use of expressions and phrases 
familiar to the lips of the governing class of the 
great Republic — delicacies of speech which he 
would have carefully shunned in the polite gir- 
cles of the Fifth Avenue, in New York. Now 
the Colonel was much too experienced a man of 
the world not to be aware that the commission 
with which his Lizzy had charged him was an 
exceedingly delicate one ; and it occurred to his 
mother-wit that the best way to acquit himself 
of it, so as to avoid the risk of giving or of re- 
ceiving serious affront, woiild be to push that 
whim of his into more than wonted exaggera- 
tion. Thus he could more decidedly and brief- 
ly come to the point ; and should he, in doing 
so, appear too meddlesome, rather provoke a 
laugh than a frown — retiring from the ground 
with the honors due to a humorist. Accordingly, 
in his deepest nasal intonation, and withdrawing 
his eyes from the ceiling, he began : 


“You have not asked. Sir, after the signori- 
na, or, as we popularly call her. Mademoiselle 
Cicogna ?” 

“ Have I not? I hope she is quite well, and 
her lively companion. Signora Venosta.” 

“ They are not sick. Sir ; or at least were not 
so last night when my wife and I had the pleas- 
ure to see them. Of course you have read Made- 
moiselle Cicogna’s book — a bright performance. 
Sir, age considered.” 

“ Certainly, I have read the book ; it is full of 
unqtiestionable genius. Is Mademoiselle writ- 
ing another? But of course she is.” 

“ I am not aware of the fact. Sir. It may be 
predicated ; such a mind can not remain inact- 
ive ; and I know from M. Savarin and that ris- 
ing young man Gustave Rameau, that the pub- 
lishers bid high for her brains considerable. Two 
translations have already appeared in our coun- 
try. Her fame. Sir, will be world-wide. She 
may he another George Sand, or at least an- 
other Eulalie Grantmesnil.” 

Graham’s cheek became as white as the pa- 
per I write on. He inclined his head as in as- 
sent, but without a word. The Colonel contin- 
ued : 

“We ought to be very proud of her acquaint- 
ance, Sir. I think you detected her gifts while 
they were yet unconjectured. My wife says so. 
You must be giatified to remember that, Sir — 
clear grit. Sir, and no mistake.” 

“ I certainly more than once have said to 
Mrs. Morley that I esteemed Mademoiselle’s 
powers so highly that I hoped she would never 
become a stage singer and actress. But this 
M. Rameau ? You say he is a rising man. It 
struck me when at Paris that he was one of 
those charlatans, with a great deal of conceit and 
very little information, Avho are always found in 
scores on the ultra- Liberal side of politics ; pos- 
sibly I was mistaken.” 

“He is the responsible editor of Ze Sens 
Commun, in which talented periodical Made- 
moiselle Cicogna’s book was first raised.” 

“Of course I know that; a journal which, so 
far as I have looked into its political or social 
articles, certainly written by a cleverer and an 
older man than M. Rameau, is for unsettling all 
things and settling nothing. We have writers 
of that kind among ourselves — I have no sym- 
pathy with them. To me it seems that when a 
man says, ‘Off with your head,’ he ought to let 
us know what other head he would put on our 
shoulders, and by what process the change of 
heads shall be effected. Honestly speaking, if 
you and your charming wife are intimate friends 
and admirers of Mademoiselle Cicogna, I think 
you could not do her a greater service thqn that 
of detaching her from all connection with men like 
M. Rameau, and joui'nals like Le Sens Commun” 

The Colonel here withdrew his cigar from his 
lips, lowered his head to a level with Graham’s, 
and relaxing into an arch, significant smile, 
said : “ Start to Paris, and dissuade her your- 
self. Start — go ahead — don’t be shy — don’t see- 
saw on the beam of speculation. You will have 
more influence with that young female than we 
can boast.” 

Never was England in greater danger of quar- 
rel with America than at that moment ; but 
Graham curbed his first wrathful impulse, and jwfi 
replied, coldly, 


THE PARISIANS. 


15 .*} 


“ It seems to me, Colonel, that you, though 
very unconsciously, derogate from the respect 
due to Mademoiselle Cicogna. That the coun- 
sel of a married couple like yourself and Mrs. 
Morley should be freely given to and duly heed- 
ed by a girl deprived of her natural advisers in 
parents is a reasonable and honorable supposi- 
tion ; but to imply that the most influential ad- 
viser of a young lady so situated is a young sin- 
gle man, in no way related to her, appears to 
me a dereliction of that regard, to the dignity 
of her sex which is the chivalrous characteristic 
of your countrymen — and to Mademoiselle Ci- 
cogna herself, a surmise which she would be jus- 
tified in resenting as an impertinence.” 

“I deny both allegations,” replied the Col- 
onel, serenely. “ I maintain that a single man 
whips all connubial creation when it comes to 
gallantizing a single young woman ; and that 
no young lady would be justified in resenting as 
impertinence my friendly suggestion to the sin- 
gle man so deserving of her consideration as I 
estimate you to be to solicit the right to advise 
her for life. And that’s a caution.” 

Hei'e the Colonel resumed his regalia, and 
again gazed intent on the ceiling. . 

“ Advise her for life ! You mean, I presume, 
as a candidate for her hand.” 

“ You don’t Turkey now. Well, I guess you 
are not wide of the mark there. Sir.” 

“ You do me infinite honor, but I do not pre- 
sume so far.” 

“ So, so — not as yet. Before a man who is 
not without gumption runs himself for Congress 
he likes to calculate how the votes will run. 
Well, Sir, suppose we are in caucus, and let us 
discuss the chances of the election with closed 
doors. ” 

Graham could not help smiling at the persist- 
ent officiousness of his visitor, but his smile was 
a very sad one. 

“ Pray change the subject, my dear Colonel 
Morley — it is not a pleasant one to me ; and as 
regards Mademoiselle Cicogna, can you think it 
would not shock her to suppose that her name 
was dragged into the discussions you would pro- 
voke, even with closed doors ?” 

“Sir,” replied the Colonel, imperturbably, 
“ since the doors are closed, there is no one, un- 
less it be a spirit-listener under the table, who 
can wire to Mademoiselle Cicogna the substance 
of debate. And, for my part, I do not believe 
in spiritual manifestations. Fact is that I have 
the most amicable sentiments toward both par- 
ties, and if there is a misunderstanding which is 
opposed to the union of the States, I wish to re- 
move it while yet in time. Now let us suppose 
that you decline to be a candidate ; there are 
plenty of others who will run ; and as an elector 
must choose one representative or other, so a 
gal must choose one husband or other. And 
then you only repent when it is too late. It is 
a great thing to be first in the field. Let us ap- 
proximate to the point ; the chances seem good. 
Will you run ? Yes or No ?” 

“I repeat. Colonel Morley, that I entertain 
no such presumption.” 

The Colonel here, rising, extended his hand, 
which Graham shook with constrained cordial- 
ity, and then leisurely walked to the door ; there 
he paused, as if struck by a new thought, and 
said, gravely, in his natural tone of voice, “You 


have nothing to say, Sir, against the young lady’s 
character and honor ?” 

“I! — Heavens, no! Colonel Morley, such a 
question insults me.” 

The Colonel resumed his deepest nasal bass ; 
“It is only, then, because you don’t fancy her 
now so much as you did last year — fact, you are 
soured on her and fly off the handle. Such 
things do happen. The same thing has hap- 
pened to myself. Sir. In my days of celibacy 
there was a gal at Saratoga whom I gallantized", 
and whom, while I was at Saratoga, I thought 
Heaven had made to be Mrs. Morley. I was 
on the very point of telling her so, when I was 
suddenly called off to Philadelphia ; and at Phil- 
adelphia, Sir, I found that Heaven had made an- 
other Mrs. Morley. I state this fact, Sir, though 
I seldom talk of my own affairs, even when will- 
ing to tender my advice in the affairs of anoth- 
er, in order to prove that I do not intend to cen- 
sure you if Heaven has served you in the same 
manner. Sir, a man may go blind for one gal 
when he is not yet dry behind the ears, and then, 
when his eyes are skinned, go in for one better. 
All things mortal meet with a change, as my sis- 
ter’s little boy said when, at the age of eight, he 
quitted the Methodies and turned Shaker. Three]) 
and argue as we may, you and I are both mortals 
—more’s the pity. Good-morning, Sir” (glan- 
cing at the clock, which proclaimed the hour of 
3 p.M.) — “I err — good-evening.” 

By the post that day the Colonel transmitted 
a condensed and laconic report of his conversa- 
tion with Graham Vane. 1 can state its sub- 
stance in yet fewer words. He wrote word that 
Graham positively declined the invitation to Par- 
is ; that he had then, agreeably to Idzzy’s in- 
structions, ventilated the Englishman, in the most 
delicate terms, as to his intentions with regard 
to Isaura, and that no intentions at all existed. 
The sooner all thoughts of him were relinquish- 
ed, and a new suitor on the ground, the better it 
would be for the young lady’s happiness in the 
only state in which happiness should be, if not 
found, at least sought, whether by maid or man. 

Mrs. Morley was extremely put out by this un- 
toward result of the diplomacy she had intrusted 
to the Colonel ; and when, the next day, came 
a very courteous letter from Graham, thanking 
her gratefully for the kindness of her invitation, 
and expressing his regret, briefly though cordial- 
ly, at his inability to profit by it, without the most 
distant allusion to the subject which the Colonel 
had brought on the tapis, or even requesting his 
compliments to the Signoras Venosta and Ci- 
cogna, she was more than put out, more than 
resentful — she was deeply grieved. Being, how- 
ever, one of those gallant heroes of womankind 
who do not give in at the first defeat, she be- 
gan to doubt whether Frank had not rather over- 
strained the delicacy which he said he had put 
into his “soundings.” He ought to have been 
more explicit. Meanwhile she resolved to call 
on Isaura, and, without mentioning Graham’s 
refusal of her invitation, endeavor to ascertain 
whether the attachment which she felt persuaded 
the girl secretly cherished for this recalcitrant 
Englishman were something more than the first 
romantic fancy — whether it were sufficiently 
deep to justify farther effort on Mrs. Morley’s 
part to bring it to a prosperous issue. 

She found Isaura at home and alone ; and, to 


156 


THE PARISIANS. 


do her justice, she exhibited wonderful tact in 
the fiiltillment of the task she had set herself. 
Forming her judgment by manner and look — not 
words — she returned home convinced that she 
ought to seize the opportunity afforded to her by 
Graham’s letter. It was one to which she might 
very naturally reply, and in that reply she might 
convey the object at her heart more felicitously 
than the Colonel had done. “The cleverest man 
is,” she said to herself, “stupid compared to an 
ordinary woman in the real business of life, which 
does not consist of fighting and money-making.” 

Now there was one point she had ascertained 
by words in her visit to Isaura — a point on wliich 
all might depend. She had asked Isaura when 
and where she had seen Graham last ; and when 
Isaura had given her that information, and she 
learned it was on the eventful day on which 
Isaura gave her consent to the publication of her 
MS., if approved by Savarin, in the journal to 
be set up by the handsome-faced young author, 
she leaped to the conclusion that Graham had 
been seized with no unnatural jealousy, and was 
still under the illusive glamoury of that green- 
eyed fiend. She was confirmed in this notion, 
not altogether an unsound one, when, asking with 
apparent carelessness, “And in that last inter- 
view did you see any change in Mr. Vane’s man- 
ner, especially when he took leave ?” 

Isaura turned away pale, and involuntaiily 
clasping her hands — as women do when they 
would suppress pain — replied, in a low manner, 
“ His manner was changed.’’ 

Accordingly, Mrs. Morley sat down and wrote 
the following letter : 

“ Dear Mr. Vane, — I am very angry indeed 
with you for refusing my invitation — I had so 
counted on you — and I don’t believe a word of 
your excuse. Engagements ! To balls and din- 
ners, I suppose, as if you were not much too 
clever to care about these silly attempts to enjoy 
solitude in crowds. And as to what you men call 
business, you have no right to have any business 
at all. You are not in commerce; you are not 
in Parliament ; you told me yourself that you 
had no great landed estates to give you trouble ; 
you are rich, without any necessity to take pains 
to remain rich or to become richer ; you have 
no business in the world except to please your- 
self ; and when you will not come to Paris to see 
one of your truest friends — which I certainly am 
— it simply means that no matter how such a 
visit would please me, it does not please yourself. 

I call that abominably rude and ungrateful. 

“But I am not writing merely to scold you. 

I have something else on my mind, and it must 
come out. Certainly, when you were at Paris 
last year, you did admire, above all other young 
ladies, Isaura Cicogna. And I honored 3mu for 
doing so. I know no young lady to be called her 
equal. Well, if you admired her then, what 
would you do now if you met her ? Then she 
was but a girl — very brilliant, very charming, it 
is true, but undeveloped, untested. ‘ Now she is 
a woman, a princess among women, but retain- 
ing all that is most lovable in a girl ; so courted, 
yet so simple — so gifted, yet so innocent. Her 
liead is not a bit turned by all the flattery that 
surrounds her. Come and judge for yourself. I 
still hold the door of the rooms destined to you 
open for repentance. 


“My dear Mr. Vane, do not think me a silly 
match-making little woman when I write to you 
thus, a cceur ouvert. 

“I like you so much that I would fain secure 
to you the rarest prize which life is ever likely to 
offer to your ambition. Where can you hope 
to find another Isaura? Among the stateliest 
daughters of 3’our English dukes, where is there 
one whom a proud man would be more proud to 
show to the world, saying, ‘ She is mine!’ where 
one more distinguished — I will not sa^' by mere 
beauty — there she might be eclipsed — but by 
sweetness and dignity combined — in aspect, 
manner, every movement, every smile ? 

“ And you, who are yourself so clever, so well 
read — you who would be so lonely with a wife who 
was not your companion, with whom you could 
not converse on equal terms of intellect — my dear 
friend, where could you find a companion in whom 
you would not miss the poet-soul of Isaura ? Of 
course I should not dare to obtrude all these ques- 
tionings on your innermost reflections, if I had not 
some idea, right or wrong, that since the days 
when at Enghien and Montmorency, seeing you 
and Isaura side by side, I whispered to Frank, 

‘ So should those two be through life,’ some cloud 
has passed between your eyes and the future on 
which the}' gazed. Can not that cloud be dis- 
pelled ? Were you so unjust to 3'ourself as to be 
jealous of a rival, perhaps of a Gustave Rameau ? 

I write to you frankly — answer me frankly ; and 
if you answer, ‘ Mrs. Morley, I don’t know what 
you mean ; I admired Mademoiselle Cicogna as 
I might admire any other pretty, accomplished 
girl, but it is really nothing to me whether she 
marries Gustave Rameau or any one else’ — why, 
then, burn this letter — forget that it has been 
written ; and may you never know the pang of 
remorseful sigh, if, in the days to come, you see 
her — whose name in that case I should pro- 
fane did I repeat it — the comrade of another 
man’s mind, the half of another man’s heart, 
the pride and delight of another man’s blissful 
home.” 


' CHAPTER IV. 

There is somewhere in Lord Lytton’s writ- 
ings — writings so numerous that I may be par- 
doned if I can not remember where — a critical 
definition of the difference between dramatic 
and narrative art of story, instanced by that 
marvelous passage in the loftiest of Sir Walter 
Scott’s works, in which all the anguish of Ra- 
venswood on the night before he has to meet 
Lucy’s brother in mortal combat is convolved 
without the spoken words required in tragedy. 
It is only to be conjectured by the tramp of his 
heavy boots to and fro all the night long in his 
solitary chamber, heard below by the faithful 
Caleb. The drama could not have allowed that 
treatment ; the drama must have put into words, 
as “soliloquy,” agonies which the non-dramatic 
narrator knows that no soliloquy can describe. 
Humbly do I imitate, then, the great master of 
narrative in declining to put into words the con- 
flict between love and reason that tortured the 
heart of Graham Vane when dropping noise- 
lessly the letter I have just transcribed. He' 
covered his face with his hands and remained — 
I know not how long — in the same position. 


THE PARISIANS. 


157 


his head bowed, not a sound escaping from his 
lips. 

He did not stir from his rooms that day; and 
had there been a Caleb’s faithful ear to listen, 
his tread, too, might have been heard all that 
sleepless niglit passing to and fro, but pausing 
oft, along his solitary doors. 

Possibly love would have borne down all op- 
posing reasonings, doubts, and prejudices, but 
for incidents that occurred the following even- 
ing. On that evening Graham dined en famille 
with his cousins the Altons. After dinner the 
Duke produced the design for a cenotaph in- 
scribed to the memory of his aunt. Lady Janet 
King, which he proposed to place in the family 
chapel at Alton. 

“ I know,” said the Duke, kindly, “ you would 
wish the old house from which she sprang to 
preserve some such record of her who loved you 
as her son ; and even putting you out of the 
question, it gratifies me to attest the claim of 
our family to a daughter wlio continues to be 
famous for her goodness, and made the good- 
ness so lovable that envy forgave it for being 
famous. It was a pang to me when poor Rich- 
ard King decided on placing her tomb among 
strangers; but in conceding his rights as to her 
resting-place, I retain mine to her name, ‘ Nos- 
tris liberis virtutis exemplar.'"' 

Graham wrung his cousin’s hand — he could 
not speak, choked by suppressed tears. 

The Duchess, who loved and honored Lady 
Janet almost as much as did her husband, fairly 
sobbed aloud. She had, indeed, reason for grate- 
ful memories of the deceased: there had been 
some obstacles to her marriage with the man 
who had won her heart, arising from political 
differences and family feuds between their par- 
ents, which the gentle mediation of Lady Janet 
had smoothed away. And never did union 
founded on mutual and ardent love more belie 
the assertions of the great Bichat (esteemed by 
Dr. Buckle the finest intellect which practical 
philosophy has exhibited since Aristotle), that 
“Love is a sort of fever which does not last 
beyond two years,” than that between these ec- 
centric specimens of a class denounced as frivo- 
lous and heartless by philosophers, English a!nd 
French, who have certainly never heard of Bi- 
chat. 

When the emotion the Duke had exhibitod 
was calmed down, his wife pushed toward Gra- 
ham a sheet of paper, inscribed with the epitaph 
composed by his hand. “ Is it not beautiful,” 
she said, falteringl}- — “ not a word too much nor 
too little ?” 

Graham read the inscription slowly, and with 
very dimmed eyes. It deserved the praise be- 
stowed on it; for the Duke, though a shy and 
awkward speaker, was an incisive and graceful 
Avriter. 

Yet, in his innermost self, Graham shivered 
when he read that epitaph, it expressed so em- 
phatically the reverential nature of the love 
which Lady Janet had inspired — the genial in- 
fluences which the holiness of a character so act- 
ive in doing good had diffused around it. It 
brought vividly before Graham that image of 
perfect spotless womanhood. And a voice with- 
in him asked, “Would that cenotaph be placed 
amidst the monuments of an illustrious lineage if 
the secret known to thee could transpire ? What 


though the lost one were really as unsullied by 
sin as the world deems, would the name now 
treasured as an heir-loom not be a memory of 
gall and a sound of shame?” 

He remained so silent after putting down the 
inscription that the Duke said, modestly, “ My 
dear Graham, I see that you do not like what I 
have written. Your pen is much more prac- 
ticed than mine. If I did not ask you to com- 
pose the epitaph, it was because I thought it 
would please you more in coming, as a spon- 
taneous tribute due to her, from the representa- 
tive of her family. But will you correct my 
sketch, or give me another according to your 
own ideas ?” 

“I see not a word to alter,” said Graham: 
“forgive me if my silence wronged my emotion ; 
the truest eloquence is that which holds us too 
mute for applause.” 

“I knew you would like it. Leopold is al- 
ways so disposed to underrate himself,” said the 
Duchess, whose hand was resting fondly on her 
husband’s shoulder. “ Epitaphs are so difficult 
to write — especially epitaphs on women of whom 
in life the least said the better. Janet was the 
only woman I ever knew whom one could praise 
in safety.” 

“ Well expressed,” said the Duke, smiling; 
“and I wish you would make that safety clear 
to some lady friends of yours, to whom it might 
serve as a lesson. Proof against every breath 
of scandal herself, Janet King never uttered and 
never encouraged one ill-natured word against 
another. But I am afraid, my dear fellow, that 
I must leave you to a tete-a-tete with Eleanor. 
You know that I must be at the House this even- 
ing — I only paired till half past nine.” 

“I will walk down to the House with you, if 
you are going on foot.” 

“No,” said the Duchess; “you must resign 
yourself to me for at least half an hour. . I was 
looking over your aunt’s letters to-day, and I 
found one which I wish to show you ; it is all 
about yourself, and written within the last few 
months of her life.” Here she put her arm into 
Graham’s, and led him into her own private 
drawing-room, which, though others might call 
it a boudoir, she dignified by the name of her 
study. The Duke I'emained for some minutes 
thoughtfully leaning his arm on the mantel-piece. 
It was no unimportant debate in the Lords that 
night, and on a subject in which he took great 
interest, and the details of which he had thor- 
oughly mastered. He had been requested to 
speak, if only a few \vords, for his high charac- 
ter and his reputation for good sense gave weight 
to the mere utterance of his opinion. But though 
no one had more moral courage in action, the 
Duke had a terror at the very thought of ad- 
dressing an audience which made him despise 
him.self. 

“ Ah !” he muttered, “if Graham Vane Avere 
but in Parliament, I could trust him to say ex- 
actly what I would rather be swallowed up by 
an earthquake than stand up and say for myself. 
But now he has got money, he seems to think of 
nothing but saving it. ” 


158 


THE PAKISIANS. 


CHAPTER V. 

The letter from Lady Janet, which the Duch- 
ess took from the desk and placed in Graham’s 
hand, was in strange coincidence with the sub- 
ject that for the last twenty -four hours had 
absorbed his thoughts and tortured his heart. 
Speaking of him in terms of affectionate eulogy, 
the writer proceeded to confide her earnest wish 
that he should not longer delay that change in 
life which, concentrating so much that is vague 
in the desires and aspirations of man, leaves his 
heart and his mind, made serene by the content- 
ment of home, free for the steadfast consolida- 
tion of their warmth and their light upon the en- 
nobling duties that unite the individual to his 
race. 

‘ ‘ There is no one, ” wrote Lady Janet, ‘ ‘ whose 
character and career a felicitous choice in mar- 
riage can have greater influence over tlian this 
dear adopted son of mine. I do not fear that 
in any case he will be liable to the errors of his 
brilliant father. His early reverse of fortune 
here seems to me one of those blessings which 
Heaven conceals in the form of affliction. For 
in youth, the genial freshness of his gay animal 
spirits, a native generosity mingled with desire 
of display and thirst for applause, made me 
somewhat alarmed for his future. But though 
he still retains these attributes of character, they 
are no longer predominant ; they are modified 
and chastened. He has learned prudence. But 
what I now fear most for him is that which he 
does not show in the world, which neither Leo- 
pold nor you seem to detect — it is an exceeding 
sensitiveness of pride. I know not how else to 
describe it. It is so interwoven with the high- 
est qualities that I sometimes dread injury to 
them could it be torn away from the faultier ones 
which it supports. 

“It is interwoven with that lofty independence 
of spirit which has made him refuse openings the 
most alluring to his ambition ; it communicates 
a touching grandeur to his self-denying thrift ; 
it makes him so tenacious of his word once given, 
so cautious before he gives it. Public life to him 
is essential ; without it he would be incomplete ; 
and yet I sigh to think that whatever success he 
may achieve in it will be attended with propor- 
tionate pain. Calumny goes side by .side with 
fame, and courting fame as a man, he is as thin- 
skinned to calumny as a woman. 

“ The wife for Graham should have qualities 
not, taken individually, uncommon in English 
wives, but in combination somewhat rare. 

“ She must have mind enough to appreciate 
his — not to clash with it. She must be fitted 
with sympathies to be his dearest companion, 
his confidante in the hopes and fears which the 
slightest want of sympathy would make him keep 
ever afterward pent within his breast. In her- 
self worthy of distinction, she must merge all 
distinction in his. You have met in the world 
men who, marrying professed beauties or pro- 
fessed literary geniuses, are spoken of as the hus- 
band of the beautiful Mrs. A , or of the 

clever Mrs. B . Can you fancy Graham 

Vane in the reflected light of one of those hus- 
bands ? I trembled last year when I thought 
he was attracted by a face which the artists 
raved about, and again by a tongue which 
dropped hons mots that went the round of the 


clubs. I was relieved when, sounding him, he 
said, laughingly, ‘No, dear aunt, I should be one 
sore from head to foot if I married a wife that 
was talked about for any thing but goodness.’ 

“No — Graham Vane will have pains sharp 
enough if he live to be talked about himself! 
But that tenderest half of himself, the bearer of 
the name he would make, and for the dignity of 
which he alone would be responsible — if that 
were the town-talk, he would curse the hour he 
gave any one the right to take on herself his 
man’s burden of calumny and fame. I know 
not which I should pity the most,. Graham Vane 
or his wife. 

“Do you understand me, dearest Eleanor? 
No doubt you do so far that you comprehend 
that the women whom men most admire are not 
the women we, as women ourselves, would wish 
our sons or brothers to marry. But perhaps you 
do not comprehend my cause of fear, which is 
this — for in such matters men do not see as we 
women do — Graham abhors, in the girls of our 
time, frivolity and insipidity. Very rightly, you 
will sa}'. True, but then he is too likely to be 
allured by contrasts. I have seen him attracted 
by the very girls we recoil from more than we 
do from those we allow to be frivolous and in- 
sipid. I accused him of admiration for a cer- 
tain young lady whom you call ‘odious,’ and 
whom the slang that has come into vogue calls 
‘fast;’ and I was not satisfied with his answer 
— ‘ Certainly I admire her; she is not a doll — 
j she has ideas.’ I would rather of the two see 
Graham married to what men call a doll than to 
a girl with ideas which are distasteful to women.” 

Lady Janet then went on to question the 
Duchess about a Miss Asterisk, with whom this 
'tale will have nothing to do, but who, from the 
little which Lady Janet had seen of her, might 
possess all the requisites that fastidious corre- 
spondent would exact for the wife of her adopted 
son. 

This Miss Asterisk had been introduced into 
the London world by the Duchess. The Duch- 
ess had replied to Lady Janet that if earth 
could be ransacked, a more suitable wife for 
Graham Vane than Miss Asterisk could not be 
found. She was well born — an heiress ; the es- 
tates she inherited were in the county of 

(viz., the county in which the ancestors of D’Al- 
tons and Vanes had for centuries established 
their whereabouts). Miss Asterisk was pretty 
enough to please any man’s eye, but not with 
the beauty of which artists rave ; well-informed 
enough to he companion to a well-informed man, 
but certainly not witty enough to supply bons 
mots to the clubs. Miss Asterisk was one of 
those women of whom a husband might be proud, 
yet with whom a husband would feel safe from 
being talked about. 

And in submitting the letter we have read to 
Graham’s eye, the Duchess had the cause of 
Miss Asterisk pointedly in view. Miss Asterisk 
had confided to her friend that, of all men she 
had seen, Mr. Graham Vane was the one she 
would feel the least inclined to refuse. 

So when Graham Vane returned the letter to 
the Duchess, simjfly saying, “ How well my dear 
aunt divined what is weakest in me !” the Duch- 
ess replied, quickly, “ Miss Asterisk dines here 
to-morrow ; pray come ; you would like her if 
you knew more of her.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


159 


“ To-morrow I am engaged — an American 
friend of mine dines with me ; but ’tis no mat- 
ter, for I shall never feel more for Miss Asterisk 
than I feel for Mont Blanc.” 


CHAPTER VI. 

On leaving his cousin’s house Graham walked 
on, he scarce knew or cared whither, the image 
of the beloved dead so forcibly recalled the so- 
lemnity of the mission with which he had been 
intrusted, and which hitherto he had failed to 
fulfill. What if the only mode by which he 
could, without causing questions and suspicions 
that might result in dragging to day the terrible 
nature of the trust he held, enrich the daughter 
of Richard King, repair all wrong hitherto done 
to her, and guard the sanctity of Lady Janet’s 
home, should be in that union which Richard 
King had commended to him while his heart was 
yet free? 

In such a case, would not gratitude to the 
dead, duty to the living, make that union imper- 
ative at whatever sacrifice of happiness to him- 
self? The two years to which Richard King had 
limited the suspense of research were not yet ex- 
pired. Then, too, that letter of Lady Janet’s 
— so tenderly anxious for his future, so clear- 
sighted as to the elements of his own character 
in its strength or its infirmities — combined with 
graver causes to withhold his heart from its 
yearning impulse, and — no, not steel it against 
Isaura, but forbid it to realize, in the fair creat- 
ure and creator of romance, his ideal of the wom- 
an to whom an earnest, sagacious, aspiring man 
commits all the destinies involved in the serene 
dignity of his hearth. He could not but own that 
this gifted author — this eager seeker after fame 
— this brilliant and bold competitor with men on 
their own stormy battle-ground — was the very 
person from whom Lady Janet would have warn- 
ed away his choice. She (Isaura) merge her own 
distinctions in a husband’s ! — she leave exclu- 
sively to him the burden of fame and calumny ! 
— she shun “to be talked about!” — she who 
could feel her life to be a success or a failure, ac- 
cording to the extent and the loudness of the talk 
which it courted ! 

ysnfile these thoughts racked his mind, a kind- 
ly hand was laid on his arm, and a cheery voice 
accosted him. “ Well met, my dear Vane ! I 
see we are bound to the same place. There will 
be a good gathering to-night. ” 

“ What do you mean, Bevil ? I am going no- 
where, except to my own quiet rooms.” 

“Pooh ! Come in here at least for a few min- 
utes;” and Bevil drew him up to the door-step 
of a house close by, where, on certain evenings, 
a well-known club drew together men who sel- 
dom meet so familiarly elsewhere — men of all 
callings — a club especially fiivored by wits, au- 
thors, and the flaneurs of polite society. 

Graham shook his head, about to refuse, when 
Bevil added, “ I have just come from Paris, and 
can give you the last news, literary, political, 
and social. By-the-way, I saw Savarin the oth- 
er night at the Cicogna’s — he introduced me 
there.” Graham winced ; he was spelled by the 
music of a name, and followed his acquaintance 
into the crowded room, and after returning many 


greetings and nods, withdrew into a remote cor- 
ner, and motioned Bevil to a seat beside him. 

“ So you met Savarin ? Where, did you say ?” 

“ At the house of the new lady author — I hate 
the word authoress — Mademoiselle Cicogna ! Of 
course vou have read her book ?” 

“Yes.” 

“Pull of fine things, is it not? — though some- 
what high-flown and sentimental. However, 
nothing succeeds like success. No book has 
been more talked about at Paris; the only thing 
more talked about is the lady author herself. ” 

“ Indeed ! — and how ?” 

“ She doesn’t look twenty, a mere girl — of 
that kind of beauty which so arrests the eye that 
you pass by other faces to gaze on it, and the 
dullest stranger would ask, ‘Who and what is 
she?’ A girl, I say, like that — who lives as in- 
dependently as if she were a middle-aged widow, 
receives every week (she has her Thursdays), 
with no other chaperon than an old ci-devant 
Italian singing-woman, dressed like a guy — must 
set Parisian tongues into play, even if she had 
not written the crack book of the season.” 

“Mademoiselle Cicogna receives on Thurs- 
days — no harm in that ; and if she have no oth- 
er chaperon than the Italian lady you mention, 
it is because Mademoiselle Cicogna is an orphan; 
and having a fortune, such as it is, of her own, 
I do not see why she should not live as independ- 
ently as many an unmarried woman in London 
placed under similar circumstances. I suppose 
she receives chiefly persons in the literary or 
artistic world ; and if they are all as respectal)le 
as the Savarins, I do not think ill nature itself 
could find fault with her social circle.” 

“Ah ! you know the Cicogna, I presume. I 
am sure I did not wish to say any thing that 
could offend her best friends, only I do think it 
is a pity she is not married, poor girl !” 

“ Mademoiselle Cicogna, accomplished, beau- 
tiful, of good birth (the Cicognas rank among 
the oldest of Lombard families), is not likely to 
want offers.” 

“Offers of marriage — h’m — well, I dare say, 
from authors and artists. You know Paris bet- 
ter even than I do, but I don’t suppose authors 
and artists there make the most desirable hus- 
bands ; and I scarcely know a marriage in Prance 
between a man author and lady author Avhich 
does not end in the deadliest of all animosities 
— that of wounded amour propre. Perhaps the 
man admires his own genius too much to do 
proper homage to his wife’s.” 

“ But the choice of Mademoiselle Cicogna 
need not be restricted to the pale of authorship 
— doubtless she has many admirers beyond that 
quarrelsome border-land. ” 

“Certainly — countless adorers. Enguerrand 
de Vandemar — you know that diamond of dan- 
dies?” 

“ Perfectly. Is he an admirer?” 

“ Cela va sans dire — he told me that though 
she was not the handsomest woman in Paris, all 
other women looked less handsome since he had 
seen her. But of course Prench lady-killers 
like Enguerrand, when it comes to marriage, 
leave it to their parents to choose tlieir wives and 
arrange the ternis of the contract. Talking of 
lady-killers, I beheld amidst the throng at Made- 
! moiselle Cicogna’s the ci-devant Lovelace whom 
' I remember some twenty-three years ago as the 


160 


THE PAKISIANS. 


darling of wives and the terror of husbands — 
Victor de Mauleon.” 

“ Victor de Mauleon at Mademoiselle Cico- 
gna’s ! What ! is that man restored to society ?” 

“Ah ! yon are thinking of the ugly old story 
about the jewels — oh yes, he has got over that ; all 
his grand relations, the Vandemars, Beauvilliers, 
Rochebriant, and others took him by the hand 
when he reappeared at Paris last year ; and though 
I believe he is still avoided by many, he is court- 
ed by still more^ — and avoided, I fancy, rather 
from political than social causes. The Imperi- 
alist set, of course, execrate and proscribe him. 
You know he is the writer of those biting arti- 
cles signed ‘ Pierre Firmin’ in the Sens Commun ; 
and 1 am told he is the proprietor of that very 
clever journal, which has become a power.” 

“So, so — that is the journal in which Made- 
moiselle Cicogna’s roman first appeared. So, so 
— Victor de Mauleon one of her associates, her 
counselor and friend — ah !” 

“ No, I didn’t say that ; on the contrary, he 
was presented to her for the first time the even- 
ing I was at the house. I saw that young silk- 
haired coxcomb, Gustave Rameau, introduce 
liihi to her. You don’t perhaps know Rameau, 
editor of the Sens Commun — writes poems and 
criticisms. They say he is a Red Republican, but 
De Maule'on keeps truculent French politics sub- 
dued, if not suppressed, in his cynical journal. 
Somebody told me that the Cicogna is very much 
in love with Rameau ; certainly he has a hand- 
some face of his own, and that is the reason wh}'^ 
she was so rude to the Russian Prince X .” 

“ How, rude ? Did the Prince propose to her ?” 

“Propose! you forget — he is married. Don’t 
you know the Princess ? Still there are other 
kinds of proposals than those of marriage which 
a rich Russian prince may venture to make to 
a pretty novelist brought up for the stage.” 

“Bevil!” cried Graham, grasping the man’s 
arm fiercely, “how dare yon ?” 

“My dear boy,” said Bevil, very much as- 
tonished,^ “ 1 really did not know that your in- 
terest in the young lady was so great. If I have 
wounded you in relating a mere on dit picked 
up at the Jockey Club, I beg you a thousand 
pardons. I dare say there was not a word of 
truth in it.” 

“ Not a word of truth, you may be sure, if the 
on dit was injurious to Mademoiselle Cicogna. 
It is true I har)e a strong interest in her ; any 
man— any gentleman — would have such interest 
in a girl so brilliant and seemingly so friendless. 
It shames one of human nature to think that the 
reward which the world makes to those who ele- 
vate its platitudes, brighten its dullness, delight 
its leisure, is — Slander ! I have had the honor 
to make the acquaintance of this lady before she 
became a ‘celebrity,’ and I have never met in 
my paths through life a purer heart or a nobler 
nature. What is the wretched on dit you con- 
descend to circulate ? Permit me to add, 

“‘He who repeats a slander shares the crime.’” 

“ Upon my honor, my dear Vane,” said Bevil,* 
seriously (he did not want for spirit), “I hardly 
know you this evening. It is not because duel- 
ing is out of fashion that a man should allow 
himself to speak in a tone that gives offense to 
another who intended none; and if dueling is 
out of fashion in England, it is still possible in 


France. Kntre nous\ I would rather cross the 
Channel with you than submit to language that 
conveys unmerited insult.” 

Graham’s cheek, before ashen pale, flushed 
into dark red. “I understand you,” he said, 
quietly, “and will be at Boulogne to-morrow.” 

“ Graham Vane,” replied Bevil, with much 
dignity, “you and I have known each other a 
great many years, and neither of us has cause 
to question the courage of the other; but I am 
much older than yourself — permit me to take the 
melancholy advantage of seniority. A duel be- 
tween us in consequence of careless words said 
about a lady in no way connected with either 
would be a cruel injury to her ; a duel on grounds 
so slight would little injure me — a man about 
town, who would not sit an hour in the House 
of Commons if you paid him a thousand pounds 
a minute. But you, Graham Vane — you whose 
destiny it is to canvass electors and make laws — 
would it not be an injury to you to be questioned 
at the hustings wh}' you broke the law, and why 
you sought another man’s life? Come, come! 
shake hands, and consider all that seconds, if 
we chose them, would exact, is said, every af- 
front on either side retracted, every apology on 
either side made.” 

“ Bevil, you disarm and conquer me. I spoke 
like a hot-headed fool ; forget it — forgive. But 
— but — I can listen calmly now — what is that 
on ditf' 

“ One that thoroughly bears out your own 
very manly upholding of the poor young orphan, 
whose name I shall never again mention with- 
out such respect as would satisfy her most sensi- 
tive champion. It was said that the Prince 
X boasted that before a week was out Made- 

moiselle Cicogna should appear in his carriage 
at the Bois de Boulogne, and wear at the opera 
diamonds he had sent to her ; that this boast 
was enforced by a wageiq and the terms of the 
wager compelled the Prince to confess the means 
he had taken to succeed, and produce the evi- 
I dence that he had lost or won. According to 
I this on dit, the Prince had written to Made- 
j moiselle Cicogna, and the letter had been accom- 
[ panied by a parure that cost him half a million 
of francs ; that the diamonds had been sent back, 
with a few words of such scorn as a queen might 
address to an upstart lackey. But, my dear 
Vane, it is a mournful position for a girl to re- 
ceive such offers ; and you must agree with me 
! in wishing she were safely married, even to Mon- 
I sieur Ramedu, coxcomb though he be. Let us 
hope that they will be an exception to French 
authors, male and female, in general, and live 
] like turtle-doves.” 


CHAPTER VII. 

A FEW days after the date of the last chapter 
Colonel Morley returned to Paris. He had dined 
with Graham at Greenwich, had met him after- 
ward in society, and paid him a farewell visit on 
the day before the Colonel’s departure; but the 
name of Isaura Cicogna had not again been ut- 
tered by either. Morley was surprised that his 
wife did not question him minutely as to the 
mode in which he had executed her delicate 
commission, and the manner as well as words 


THE PARISIANS. 


with which Graham had replied to his “ventila- 
tions.” But his Lizzy cut him short when he 
began his recital. 

“I don’t want to hear any thing more about 
the man. He has thrown away a prize richer 
than his ambition will ever gain, even if it gain- 
ed him a throne.” 

“That it can’t gain him in the old country. 
The people are loyal to the present dynasty, 
whatever you may be told to the contrary.” 

“Don’t be so horribly literal, Frank; that 
subject is done with. How was the Duchess of 
M dressed ?” 

But when the Colonel had retired to what the 
French call the cabinet de travail — and which 
he more accurately termed his “smoke den” — 
and there indulged in the cigar which, despite his 
American citizenship, was forbidden in the draw- 
ing-room of the tyrant who ruled his life, Mrs. 
Morley took from her desk a letter received 
three days before, and brooded over it intently, 
studying every word. When she had thus re- 
perused it, her tears fell upon the page. “ Poor 
Isaura !” she muttered — “ poor Isaura ! I know 
she loves him — and how deeply a nature like 
hers can love ! But I must break it to her. If 
I did not, she would remain nursing a vain 
dream, and refuse every chance of real happiness 
for the sake of nursing it.” Then she mechan- 
ically folded up the letter — I need not say it w'as 
from Graham Vane — restored it to the desk, and 
remained musing till the Colonel looked in at 
the door and said, peremptorily, “Very late — 
come to bed.” 

The next day Madame Savariii called on 
Isaura. 

“ Chere enfant,'' said she, “I have bad news 
for you. Poor Gustave is very ill — an attack 
of the lungs and fever ; you know how delicate 
he is.” 

“ I am sincerely grieved,” said Isaura, in ear- 
nest, tender tones ; “ it must be a very sudden 
attack : he was here last Thursday.” 

“The malady only declared itself yesterday 
morning, but surely you must have observed how 
ill he has been looking for several days past. It 
pained me to see him.” 

“I did not notice any change in him,” said 
Isaura, somewhat conscience-stricken. Wrapped 
in her own happy thoughts, she w'ould not have 
noticed change in faces yet more familiar to her 
than that of her young admirer. 

“ Isaura,” said Madame Savarin, “I suspect 
there are moral causes for our friend’s failing 
health. Why should I disguise my meaning? 
You know well how madly he is in love with 
you ; and have you denied him hope ?” 

“I like M. Rameau as a friend; I admire 
him — at times I pity him.” 

“Pity is akin to love.” 

“I doubt the truth of that saying, at all 
events as you apply it now. I could not love 
M. Rameau ; I never gave him cause to think I 
could.” 

‘ ‘ I wish for both your sakes that you could 
make me a different answ’er; for his sake, be- 
cause, knowing his faults and failings, I am per- 
suaded that they would vanish in a companion- 
ship so pure, so elevating as yours : you could 
make him not only so much happier but so 
much better a man. Hush ! let me go on ; let 
me come to yourself — I say for your sake I wish 
M 


IGl 

it. Your pursuits, your ambition, are akin to 
his ; you should not marry one who could not 
sympathize w’ith you in these. If you did, he 
might either restrict the exercise of your genius 
or be chafed at its display. The only authoress 
I ever knew whose married lot was serenely hap- 
py to the last was the greatest of English poet- 
esses married to a great I^nglish poet. You 
can not, you ought not, to devote yourself to the 
splendid career to which your genius irresistibly 
impels you without that counsel, that support, 
that protection which a husband alone can give. 
My dear child, as the wife- myself of a man of 
letters, and familiarized to all the gossip, all the 
scandal, to which they who give their names to 
the public are exposed, I declare that if I had a 
daughter -who inherited Savarin’s talents, and 
was ambitious of attaining to his renown, I 
would rather shut her up in a convent than let 
her publish a book that was in every one’s hands 
until she had sheltered her name under that of 
a husband ; and if I say this of my child with a 
father so Avise in the Avorld’s ways, and so popu- 
larly respected as my honhomme, what must I 
feel to be essential to your safety, poor stranger 
in our land ! poor solitary orphan ! with no 
other advice or guardian than, the singing mis- 
tress whom you touchingly call ‘ Madre !' I see 
how I distress and pain you — I can not help it. 
Listen. The other evening Savarin came back 
from his favorite cafe in a state of excitement 
that made me think he came to announce a rev- 
olution. It was about you ; he stormed, he wept 
— actually Avept — my philosophical laughing Sa- 
varin. He had j ust heard of that atrocious wager 
made by a Russian barbarian. EA'cry one praised 
you for the contempt Avith Avhich you had treat- 
ed the saA-age’s insolence. But that you should 
haA'e been submitted to such an insult without 
one male friend Avho had the right to resent and 
chastise it — you can not think how Savarin Avas 
chafed and galled. You knoAv hoAv he admires, 
but you can not guess hoAv he reveres you ; and 
since then he says to me every day ; ‘ That girl 
must not remain single. Better marry any man 
who has a heart to defend a Avife’s honor and 
the nerve to fire a pistol. Every Frenchman has 
those qualifications !’ ” 

Here Isaura could no longer restrain her emo- 
tions ; she burst into sobs so vehement, so con- 
vulsh'e, that Madame SaA’^arin became alarmed ; 
but Avhen she attempted to embrace and soothe 
her, Isaura recoiled Avith a visible shudder, and 
gasping out, “Cruel, cruel!” turned to the door, 
and rushed to her OAvn room. 

A feAv minutes afterAvard a maid entered the 
salon Avith a message to Madame Savarin that 
mademoiselle Avas so unAA^ell that she must beg 
madame to excuse her return to the salon. 

Later in the day Mrs. Morley called, but Isau- 
ra Avould not see her. 

MeanAvhile poor Rameau Avas stretched on his 
sick-bed, and in sharp struggle betAV’een life and 
death. It is difficult to disentangle, one by one, 
all the threads in a nature so complex as Ra- 
meau’s ; but if Ave may hazard a conjecture, the 
grief of disappointed loA^e Avas not the immedi- 
ate cause of his illness, and yet it had much to 
do Avith it. The goad of Isaura’s refusal had 
driA'en him into seeking distraction in excesses 
Avhich a stronger frame could have courted Avith 
impunity. The man Avas thoroughly Parisian in 


162 


THE PARISIANS. 


many things, but especially in impatience of any 
trouble. Did love trouble him — love could be 
drowned in absinthe ; and too much absinthe 
may be a more immediate cause of congested 
lungs than the love which the absinthe had lulled 
to sleep. 

His bedside was not watched by hirelings. 
When first taken thus ill — too ill to attend to liis 
editorial duties— information was conveyed to 
the publisher of the Sens Cotnmun, and in conse- 
quence of that infonnation Victor de Mauleon 
came to see the sick man. By his bed he found 
Savarin, who had called, as it were, by chance, 
and seen the doctor, who had said, “ It is grave. 
He must be well nursed.” 

Savarin whispered to De Mauleon, “Shall 
we call in a professional nurse, or a scenr de 
charity ?" 

De Mauleon replied, also in whisper, “ Some- 
body told me that the man had a mother.” 

It W'as true — Savarin had forgotten it. Ra- 
meau never mentioned his parents — he was not 
proud of them. They belonged to a lower class 
of bourgeoisie^ retired shop-keepers, and a Red 
Republican is sworn to hate of the bourgeoisie, 
high or low ; while a beautiful young author 
pushing his way into the Chaussee D’Antin does 
not proclaim to the world that his parents had 
sold hosiery in the Rue St. Denis. 

Nevertheless Savarin knew that Rameau had 
such parents still living, and took the hint. Two 
hours afterward Rameau was leaning his burning 
forehead on his mother’s breast. 

The next morning the doctor said to the moth- 
er, “ You are worth ten of me. If you can stay 
liere we shall pull him through.” 

“ Stay here ! — my own boy !” cried, indignant- 
ly, the poor mother. 

♦ 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The day which had inflicted on Isaura so 
keen an anguish was marked by a great trial in 
the life of Alain de Rochebriant. 

In the morning he received the notice of “ 
c.ommandement tendant a saisie irnmobiliere,” on 
the part of his creditor, M. Louvier; in plain 
Phiglish, an announcement that his property at 
Rochebriant would be put up to public sale on a 
certain day, in case all debts due to the mortga- 
gee were not paid before. An hour afterward 
came a note from Duplessis stating that “he 
had returned from Bretagne on the previous 
evening, and would be very happy to see the 
Marquis de Rochebriant before two o’clock, if 
not inconvenient to call.” 

Alain put the “ couimandemenf' into his pock- 
et, and repaired to the Hotel Duplessis. 

The financier received him with very cordial 
civility. Then he began : “I am happy to say 
I left your excellent aunt in very good health. 
She honored the letter of introduction to her 
which I owe to your politeness with the most 
amiable hospitalities ; she insisted on my re- 
moving from the auberge at which I first put up 
and becoming a guest under your venerable 
roof-tree — a most agreeable lady, and a most 
interesting chateau.'' 

“I fear your accommodation was in striking 
contrast to your comforts at Paris ; my chateau 


is only interesting to an antiquarian enamored 
of ruins. ” 

‘ ‘ Pardon me, ‘ ruins’ is an exaggerated ex- 
pression. I do not say that the chateau does not 
want some repairs, but they would not be cost- 
ly ; the outer walls are strong enough to def\' 
time for centuries to come, and a few internal 
decorations and some modern additions of fur- 
niture would make the old manoir a home fit for 
a prince. I have been oAcr the whole estate, 
too, with the worthy M. Hebert — a superb prop- 
erty!” 

“ Which M. Louvier appears to appreciate,” 
said Alain, with a somewhat melancholy smile, 
extending to Duplessis the menacing notice. 

Duplessis glanced at it, and said, dryly, “ M. 
Louvier knows what he is about. But I think 
we had better put an immediate stop to formali- 
ties which must be painful to a creditor so be- 
nevolent. I do not presume to offer to pay the 
interest due on the security you can give for the 
repayment. If you refused that offer fiom so 
old a friend as Lemercier, of course you could 
not accept it from me. I make another propos- 
al, to which you can scarcely object. I do not 
like to give my scheming rival on the Bourse the 
triumph of so profoundly planned a speculation. 
Aid me to defeat him. Let me take the mort- 
gage on myself, and l)ecome sole mortgagee — 
hush ! — on this condition, that there should be 
an entire union of interests between us two ; 
that I should be at liberty to make the improve- 
ments I desire, and when the improvements be 
made, there should be a fair arrangement as to 
the proportion of profits due to me as mortgagee 
and improver, to you as original owner. Attend, 
my dear IMarquis — I am speaking as a mere man 
of business. I see my way to adding more than 
a third — I might even say a half — to tlie present 
revenues of Rochebriant. The woods have been 
sadly neglected ; drainage alone would add great- 
ly to their produce. Your orchards might be 
rendered magnificent supplies to Baris with bet- 
ter cultivation. Lastly, I would devote to build- 
ing purposes or to market-gardens all the lands 

round the two towns of and . I think I 

can lay my hands on suitable speculators for these 
last experiments. In a word, though the mar- 
ket value of Rochebriant, as it now stands, would 
not be equivalent to the debt on it, in five or 
six years it could be made worth — well, I will 
not say how much — but we shall be both well 
satisfied with the result. Meanwhile, if you al- 
low me to find purchasers for your timber, and 
if you will not suffer the Chevalier de Binisterre 
to regulate your expenses, you need have no fear 
that the interest due to me will not be regularly 
paid, even though I shall be compelled, for the 
first year or two at least, to ask a higher rate of 
interest than Louvier exacted — say a quarter per 
cent, more; and in suggesting that, you will 
comprehend that this is now a matter of business 
between us, and not of friendship. ” 

Alain turned his head aside to conceal his 
emotion, and then with the quiek, affectionate 
impulse of the genuine French nature, threw 
himself on the financier’s breast and kissed him 
on both cheeks. 

“ You save me ! you save the home and tombs 
of my ancestors I Thank you I can not ; but I 
believe in God — I. pray — I will pray for you as 
for a father ! And if ever,” he hurried on, in bro- , 


THE PARISIANS. 


IGo 


ken words, “ I am mean enough to squander on 
idle luxuries one franc that I should save for the 
debt due to you, chide me as a father would chide 
a graceless son. ” 

Moved as Alain was, Duplessis was moved yet 
more deeply. “ What father would not be proud 
of such a son? Ah, if I had such a one!” he 
said, softly. Then, quickly recovering his wont- 
ed composure, he added, with the sardonic smile 
which often chilled his friends and alarmed his 
foes, “Monsieur Louvier is about to pass that 
which I ventured to promise him, a ‘ mauvais 
quart dheure.' Lend me that coinmandement 
tendant a saisie. I must be off to my avou6 
with instructions. If you have no better en- 
gagement, pray dine with me to-day, and accom- 
pany Valerie and myself to the opera.” 

I need not say that Alain accepted the invita- 
tion. How happy Valerie was that evening! 

« 

CHAPTER IX. 

The next day Duplessis w'as surprised by a 
visit from M. Louvier — that magnate of million- 
naires had never before set foot in the house of 
his younger and less famous rival. 

The burly man entered the room with a face 
much flushed, and with more than his usual mix- 
ture of jovial brusquerie and opulent swagger. 

“ Startled to see me, I dare say,” began Lou- 
vier, as soon as the door was closed. “I have 
this morning received a communication from 
your agent containing a check for the interest 
due to me from M. Rochebriant, and a formal 
notice of your intention to pay off the principal 
on behalf of that popinjay prodigal. Though 
we two have not hitherto been the best friends 
in the w^orld, I thought it fair to a man in your 
station to come to you direct and say, ‘ Cher con- 
frere^ w'hat swindler has bubbled you ? You don’t 
know the real condition of this Breton property, 
or you would never so throw away your millions. 
The property is not vrorth the mortgage I have 
on it by 30,000 louis.’ ” 

“ Then, M. Louvier, 3 'ou will be 30,000 louis 
the richer if I take the mortgage off your hands.” 

*' ‘ I can afford the loss — no offense — better than 
you can ; and I may have fltncies which I don’t 
mind paying for, but which can not influence an- 
other. See, I have brought Avitli me the exact 
schedule of all details respecting this property. 
You need not question their accuracy : they have 
been arranged by the Marquis’s own agents, M. 
Gandrin and M. Hebert. They contain, you 
will perceive, every possible item of revenue, 
down to an apple-tree. Now look at that, and 
tell me if you are justified in lending such a sum 
on such a property. ” 

“Thank you very much for an interest in my 
affairs that I scarcely ventured to expect M. 
Louvier to entertain; but I see that I have a 
duplicate of this paper, furnished to me very hon- 
estly by M. Hebert himself. Besides, I too 
have fancies which I don’t mind paying for, and 
among them may be a fancy for the lands of 
Rochebriant.” 

“Look you, Duplessis, when a man like me 
asks a favor, j'ou may be sure that he has the 
power to repay it. Let me have my whim here, 
and ask any thing you like from me in return !” 


sold not to oblige you, but this has become 
not only a whim of mine, but a matter of honor ; 
and honor, you know, my dear M. Louvier, is 
the first principle of sound finance. I have my- 
self, after careful inspection of the Rochebriant 
property, volunteered to its owner to advance the 
money to pay off your hypotheqne; and what 
would be said on the Bourse if Lucien Duplessis 
failed in an obligation ?” 

“I think I can guess what will one day be 
said of Lucien Duplessis if he make an irrevo- 
cable enemy of Paul Louvier. Corbleu! mon 
cher, a man of thrice your cai)ital, who watched 
every speculation of yours with a hostile e^-e, 
might some beau jour make even you a bank- 
rupt!” 

“Forewarned, forearmed !” replied Duplessis, 
imperturbably. “ ^ Fas est ab hoste docerV — I 
mean, ‘It is right to be taught by an enemy;’ 
and I never remember the day when you were 
otherwise, and yet I am not a bankrupt, though 
I receive j'ou in a house which, thanks to you, 
is so modest in point of size!” 

“ Bah ! that was a mistake of mine — and, ha ! 
ha ! you had your revenge there — that forest ! ” 

“Well, as a peace-offering, I will give you up 
the forest, and content m 3 " ambition as a landed 
proprietor with .this bad speculation of Roche- 
briant !” 

“Confound the forest ! I don’t care for it now. 
I can sell my place for more than it has cost me 
to one of your imperial favorites. Build a palace 
in 3 "our forest. Let me have Rochebriant, and 
name your terms.” 

“A thousand pardons! but I have alreadv" 
had the honor to inform 3 'Ou that I have con- 
tracted an obligation which does not allow me to 
listen to terms.” 

As a serpent that, after all crawlings and wind- 
ings, rears itself on end, Louvier rose, crest 
erect — 

“So, then, it is finished. I came here dis- 
posed to offer peace. You refuse, and declare 
war. ” 

“ Not at all; I do not declare war; I accept 
it if forced on me. ” 

“ Is that 3 ’our last word, M. Duplessis?” 

“Monsieur Louvier, it is.” 

“ ZIow/oMr 

And Louvier strode to the door. Here he 
paused. “Take a day to consider.” 

“ Not a moment.” 

“Your servant, monsieur — your very humble 
servant.” Louvier vanished. 

Duplessis leaned his large thoughtful forehead 
on his thin nervous hand. “This loan will 
pinch me,” he muttered. “ I must be very wary 
now with such a foe. Well, why should I care 
to be rich? Valerie’s dot, Vale'rie’s happiness, 
are secured.” 


CHAPTER X. 

IMadame Savarin wrote a very kind and very 
apologetic letter to Isaura, but no answer was 
returned to it. Madame Savarin did not ven- 
ture to communicate to her husband the sub- 
stance of a conversation which had ended so 
painfully. He had, in theory, a delicacy of tact 
which, if he did not alwav's exhibit it in practice, 
made him a very severe critic of its deficiency in 


1G4 


THE PARISIANS. 


others. Therefore, unconscious of the offense 
given, he made a point of calling at Isaura’s 
apartments, and leaving word with her servant 
that “ he was sure she would be pleased to hear 
M. Rameau was somewhat better, though still in 
danger.” 

It was not till the third day after her interview 
with Madame Savarin that Isaura left her own 
room. She did so to receive Mrs. Morley. 

The foir American was shocked to see the 
change in Isaura’s countenance. She was very 
pale, and with that indescribable appearance of 
exhaustion which betrays continued want of 
sleep ; her soft eyes were dim, the play of her 
lips was gone, her light step weary and languid. 

“My poor darling!” cried Mrs. Morley, em- 
bracing her, “you have indeed been ill ! What 
is the matter? Who attends you?” 

“I need no physician; it was but a passing 
cold — the air of Paris is very trying. Never 
mind me, dear. What is the last news ?” 

Therewith Mrs. Morley ran glibly through the 
principal topics of the hour — the breach threat- 
ened between M. Ollivier and his former Liber- 
al partisans ; the tone unexpectedly taken by M. 
de Girardin ; the speculations as to the result of 
the trial of the alleged conspirators against the 
Emperor’s life, which was fixed to take place 
toward the end of that month of June — all mat- 
ters of no slight importance to the interests of 
an empire. Sunk deep into the recesses of her 
fauteuil, Isaura seemed to listen quietly, till, 
when a pause came, she said, in cold, clear tones, 

“And Mr. Graham Vane — he has refused 
your invitation ?” 

“ I am sorry to say he has — he is so engaged 
in London.” 

“I knew he had refused,” said Isaura, with a 
low bitter laugh. 

“ How ? Who told you ?” 

“ My own good sense told me. One may have 
good sense, though one is a poor scribbler.” 

“ Don’t talk in that way ; it is beneath you to 
angle for compliments. ” 

“ Compliments ! ah ! And so Mr. Vane has 
refused to come to Paris. Never mind ; he will 
come next year. I shall not be in Paris then. 
Did Colonel Morley see Mr. Vane?” 

“ Oh yes ; two or three times.” 

“ He is well ?” 

“Quite well, I believe — at least Prank did 
not say to the contrary ; but, from what I hear, 
he is not the person I took him for. Many peo- 
ple told Frank that he is much changed since 
he came into his fortune — is grown very stingy, 
quite miserly, indeed ; declines even a seat in 
Parliament because of the expense. It is as- 
tonishing how money does spoil a man.” 

“He had come into his fortune when he was 
here. Money had not spoiled him then.” 

Isaura paused, pressing her hands tightly to- 
gether ; then she suddenly rose to her feet, the 
color on her cheek mantling and receding rapid- 
ly, and fixing on her startled visitor eyes no lon- 
ger dim, but with something half fierce, half im- 
ploring in the passion of their gaze, said, “ Your 
husband spoke of me to Mr. Vane: I know he 
did. What did Mr. Vane answer? Do not 
evade my question. The truth I the truth ! I 
only ask the truth I” 

“Give me your hand. Sit here beside me, 
dearest child.” 


“Child! — no, I am a woman! — weak as a 
woman, but strong as a woman too ! The 
truth !” 

Mrs. Morley had come prepared to carry out 
the resolution she had formed and “break” to 
Isaura “ the truth,” that which the girl now de- 
manded. But then she had meant to break the 
truth in her own gentle, gradual way. Thus 
suddenly called upon, her courage failed her. 
She burst into tears. Isaura gazed at her dry- 
eyed. 

“ Your tears answer me. Mr. Vane has heard 
that I have been insulted. A man like him does 
not stoop to love for a woman who has known an 
insult. I do not blame him ; I honor him the 
more — he is right. ” 

“No — no — no! — you insulted! Who dared 
to insult you ?” (Mrs. Morley had never heard 
the story about the Russian Prince.) “Mr. Vane 
spoke to Frank, and writes of you to me as of 
one whom it is impossible not to admire, to re- 
spect ; but — I can not say it — you will have the 
truth — there, read and judge for yourself. ” And 
Mrs. Morley drew forth and thrust into Isaura’s 
hands the letter she had concealed from her 
husband. The letter was not very long ; it be- 
gan with expressions of warm gratitude to Mrs. 
Morley, not for her invitation only, but for the 
interest she had conceived in his happiness. It 
then went on thus : 

“I join with my whole heart in all that you 
say, with such eloquent justice, of the mental 
and personal gifts so bounteously lavished by na- 
ture on the young lady whom you name. 

“No one can feel more sensible than I of the 
charm of so exquisite a loveliness ; no one can 
more sincerely join in the belief that the praise 
which greets the commencement of her career is 
but the whisper of the praise that will cheer its 
progress with louder and louder plaudits. 

“ He only would be worthy of her hand who, 
if not equal to herself in genius, would feel raised 
into partnership with it by sympathy with its ob- 
jects and joy in its triumphs. For myself, the 
same pain with which I should have learned she 
had adopted the profession which she original- 
ly contemplated saddened and stung me when, 
choosing a career that confers a renown yet 
more lasting than the stage, she no less left 
behind her the peaceful immunities of private 
life. Were I even free to consult only my own 
heart in the choice of the one sole partner of my 
destinies (which I can not at present honestly 
say that I am, though I had expected to be so 
ere this, when I last saw you at Paris) ; could I 
even hope — which I have no right to do — that I 
could chain to myself any private portion of 
thoughts which now flow into the large channels 
by which poets enrich the blood of the world — 
still (I say it in self-reproach — it may be the fault 
of my English rearing — it may rather be the fault 
of an egotism peculiar to myself) — still I doubt 
if I could render happy any woman whose world 
could not be narrowed to the Home that she 
adorned and blessed. 

“And yet not even the jealous tyranny of 
man’s love could dare to say to natures like hers 
of whom we speak, ‘ Limit to the household 
glory of one the light which genius has placed in 
its firmament for the use and enjoyment of all.’ ” 

“I thank you so much,” said Isaura, calmly; 
“suspense makes a woman so weak — certainly 


THE PARISIANS. 


so strong.” Mechanically she smoothed and re- 
folded the letter — mechanically, but with slow, 
lingering hands — then she extended it to her 
friend, smiling. 

“Nay, will you not keep it yourself?” said 
Mrs. Morley. “The more you examine the 
narrow'-minded prejudices, the English arrogant 
7 «an’s jealous dread of superiority — nay, of equal- 
ity — in the woman he can only value as he does 
his house or his horse, because she is his exclu- 
sive property, the more you will be rejoiced to 
find yourself free for a more w’orthy choice. 
Keep the letter ; read it till you feel for the writer 
forgiveness and disdain.” 

Isaura took back the letter, and leaned her 
cheek on her hand, looking dreamily into space. 
It was some moments before she replied, and 
her words then had no reference to Mrs. Mot- 
ley’s consolatory exhortation. 

“He was so pleased when he learned that I 
renounced the career on which I had set my am- 
bition. I thought he would have been so pleased 
when I sought in another career to raise myself 
nearer to his level. I see now how sadly I was 
mistaken. All that perplexed me before in him 
is explained. I did not guess how foolishly I 
had deceived myself till three days ago — then I 
did guess it ; and it was that guess which tor- 
tured me so terribly that I could not keep my 
heart to myself when I saw you to-day ; in spite 
of all womanly pride, it would force its way — 
to the truth. Hush ! 1 must tell you w'hat was 
said to me by another friend of mine — a good 
friend, a wise and kind one. Yet I was so an- 
giy when she said it that I thought I could never 
see her more.” 

“ My sweet darling ! who was this friend, and 
what did she say to you ?” 

“The friend was Madame Savarin.” 

“No w’oman loves you more except myself; 
and she said — ” 

“That she -would have suffered no daughter 
of hers to commit her name to the talk of the 
w'orld as I have done — be exposed to the risk 
of insult as I have been — until she had the shel- 
ter and protection denied to me. And I having 
thus overleaped the bound that a prudent moth- 
er would prescribe tc her child, have become 
one whose hand men do not seek, unless they 
themselves take the same roads to notoriety. 
Do you not think she was right?” 

“ Not as you so morbidly put it, silly girl — cer- 
tainly not right. But I do wish that 3*011 had 
the shelter and protection which Madame Sa- 
varin meant to express ; I do wish that you 
were happily married to one very different from 
Mr. Vane — one -who would be more proud of 
vour genius than of 3'our beauty — one who 
would sa}', ‘ !My name, safer far in its enduring 
nobility than those that depend on titles and 
lands — which are held on the tenure of the pop- 
ular breath — must be honored by posterit}*, for 
She has deigned to make it hers. No democrat- 
ic revolution can disennoble vie.'' 

“ Ay, a}’-, you believe that men will be found 
to think with complacency that they owe to a 
wife a name that they could not achieve for them- 
selves. Bossibly there are such men. Where ? 
— among those that are already united by 63'mpa- 
thies in the same callings, the same labors, the 
same hopes and fears, with the women who have 
left behind them the privacies of home. Ma- 


les 

dame de Grantmesnil was wrong. Artists should 
wed with artists. True — true I” 

Here she passed her hand over her forehead—^ 
it was a pretty way of hers when seeking to con- 
centrate thought — and was silent a moment or so. 

“Did you ever feel, ’’she then asked, dream- 
ily, “ that there are moments in life when a dark 
curtain seems to fall over one’s past that a day 
before was so clear, so blended with the present ? 
One can not any longer look behind ; the gaze 
is attracted onward, and a track of fire flashes 
upon the future — the future which yesterday was 
invisible. There is a line by some English poet 
— Mr. Vane once quoted it, not to me, but to 
M. Savarin, and in illustration of his argument — 
that the most complicated recesses of thought 
are best reached by the simplest forms of ex- 
pression. I said to myself, ‘I will study that 
truth if ever I take to literature as I have taken 
to song;’ and — 3*es — it was that evening that 
the ambition fatal to woman fixed on me its re- 
lentless fangs — at Enghien — we were on the lake 
— the sun was setting.” 

“But you do not tell me the line that so im- 
pressed you,” said Mrs. Morle3*, with the wom- 
an’s kindly tact. 

“The line — which line? Oh, I remember ; 
the line was this — 

‘I see as from a tower the end of all.’ 

And now — kiss me, dearest — never a word again 
to me about this conversation : never a word 
about Mr. Vane — the dark curtain has fallen on 
the4)ast.” 


CHAPTER XI. 

Men and women are much more like each 
other in certain large elements of character than 
is generally supposed, but it is that very resem- 
blance which makes their differences the more 
incomprehensible to each other; just as in poli- 
tics, theology, or that most disputatious of all 
things disputable, metaphysics, the nearer the 
reasoners approach each other in points that to 
an uncritical by-stander seem the most impor- 
tant, the more sure they are to start off in oppo- 
site directions upon reaching the speck of a pin- 
prick. 

Now there are certain grand meeting-places 
between man and woman — the grandest of all is 
on the ground of love, and yet here also is the 
great field of quarrel. And here the teller of a 
tale such as mine ought, if he is sufficiently wise 
to be humble, to know that it is almost profana- 
tion if, as man, he presumes to enter the pener 
tralia of a woman’s innermost heart, and repeat, 
as a man would repeat, all the vibrations of 
sound which the heart of a woman sends forth 
undistinguishable even to her own ear. 

I know Isaura as intimately as if I had rocked 
her in her cradle, played with her in her child- 
hood, educated and trained her in her youth; 
and yet I can no more tell you faithfully what 
passed in her mind during the forty-eight hours 
that intervened "between her conversation with 
that American lady and her reappearance in 
some commonplace drawing-room than I can 
tell you what the Man in the Moon might feel 
if the sun that his world reflected were blotted 
out of creation. 


166 


THE PARISIANS. 


I can only say that when she reappeared in 
that commonplace drawing-room world, there 
was a change in her face not very perceptible 
to the ordinary observer. If any thing, to his 
eye she was handsomer — the eye was brighter — 
the complexion (always lustrous — though some- 
what pale, the limpid paleness that suits so well 
with dark hair) was yet more lustrous — it was 
flushed into delicate rose hues — hues that still 
better suit with dark hair. What, then, was 
the change, and change not for the better ? The 
lips, once so pensively sweet, had grown hard ; 
on the brow that had seemed to laugh when the 
lips did there was no longer sympathy between 
brow and lip ; there was scarcely seen a fine 
thread-like line that in a few years would be a 
furrow on the space between the eyes ; the voice 
was not so tenderly soft ; the step was haugh- 
tier. What all such change denoted it is for a 
Avoman to decide — 1 can only guess. In the 
mean while Mademoiselle Cicogna had sent her 
servant daily to inquire after M. Rameau. That, 
I think, she Avould have done under any circum- 
stances. Meanwhile, too, she had called on Ma- 
dame Savarin — made it up with her — sealed the 
reconciliation by a cold kiss. That, too, under 
any circumstances, I think, she would haA’e done 
— under some circumstances the kiss might have 
been less cold. 

There was one thing unwonted in her habits. 
I mention it, though it is only a Avoman Avho 
can say if it means any thing Avorth noticing. 

For six days she had left a letter from Ma- 
dame de Grantmesnil unansAvered. With ^la- 
dame de Grantmesnil Avas connected the Avliole 
of her innermost life — from the day when the 
lonely, desolate child had seen, beyond the dusty 
thoroughfares of life, gleams of the faery-land in 
poetry and art — onward through her restless, 
dreamy, aspiring youth — onward — onward — till 
noAv, through all that constitutes the glorious re- 
ality that Ave call romance. 

Never before had she left for two days unan- 
swered letters Avhich Avere to her as Sibylline 
leaves to some unquiet neophyte yearning for 
solutions to enigmas suggested Avhether by the 
world without or by the soul Avithin. For six 
days Madame de Grantmesnil’s letter remained 
unanswered, unread, neglected, thrust out of 
sight,; just as Avhen some imperious necessity 
compels us to grapple Avith a Avorld that is, Ave 
cast aside the romance Avhich, in our holiday 
hours, had beguiled us to a Avorld Avith Avhich 
Ave have interests and sympathies no more. 


CHAPTER XII. 

Gustave recoA-ered, but slowly. The physi- 
cian pronounced him out of all immediate dan- 
ger, but said frankly to him, and someAvhat more 
guardedly to his parents, “ There is ample cause 
to beAvare.” “Look you, my young friend,” he 
added to Rameau, “mere brain-Avork seldom 
kills a man once accustomed to it, like you ; but 
heart-Avork and stomach-work and nerve-work, 
added to brain-Avork, may soon consign to the 

coffin a frame ten times more robust than vours. 

¥ 

Write as much as you Avill — that is your voca- 
tion ; but it is not your vocation to drink ab- 
sinthe — to preside at orgies in the Maison Do- 


ree. Regulate yourself, and not after the fashion 
of the fabulous Hon Juan. Mai ry — live soberly 
and quietly — and you may survive the grand- 
children of viveurs. Go on as you have done, 
and before the year is out you are in Pere la 
Chaise.'' 

Rameau listened languidly, but Avith a pro- 
found conviction that the physician thoroughly 
understood his case. 

Lying helpless on his bed, he had no desire 
for orgies at the Maison Doree; Avith parched 
lips thirsty for innocent tisane of lime blossoms, 
the thought of absinthe AA^as as odious to him as 
the liquid fire of Phlegethon. If CA'er sinner be- 
came suddenly convinced that there was a good 
deal to be said in favor of a moral life, that sin- 
ner, at the moment I speak of, Avas Gustave Ra- 
meau. Certainly a moral life — “ Domus et pla- 
cens uxor.," Avere essential to the poet Avho, as- 
piring to immortal glory, was condemned to the 
ailments of a A’ery perishable frame. 

“Ah!” he murmured, plaintively, to himself, 
“that girl Isaura can have no true sympathy 
with genius ! It is no ordinary man that she 
Avill kill in me !” 

And so murmuring, he fell asleep. When he 
Avoke and found his head pilloAved on his moth- 
er’s breast, it Avas much as a sensitive, delicate 
man may Avake after having drunk too much the 
night before. Repentant, mournful, maudlin, he 
began to Aveep, and in the course of his Aveeping 
he confided to his mother the secret of his heart. 

Isaura had refused him — that refusal had made 
him desperate. 

‘ ‘ Ah I with Isaura hoAv changed Avould be his 
habits ! hoAv pure ! hoAv healthful !” His moth- 
er listened fondly, and did her best to comfort 
him and cheer his drooping spirits. 

She told him of Isaura’s messages of inquiry 
duly tAvice a day. Rameau, Avho kncAv more 
about Avomen in general, and Isaura in particu- 
lar, than his mother conjectured, shook his head 
mournfully. “She could not do less,” he said. 

“ Has no one offered to do more?” He thought 
of Julie Avhen he asked that. Madame Rameau 
hesitated. 

These poor Parisians I it is the mode to preach 
against them ; and before my book closes I shall 
have to preach — no, not to preach, but to imply 
— plenty of faults to consider and amend. Mean- 
Avhile I try my best to take them, as the philoso- 
phy of life tells us to take other people, for Avhat 
they are. 

1 do not think the domestic relations of the 
Pai'isian bourgeoisie are as bad as they are said 
to be in French novels. Madame Rameau is not 
an uncommon type of her class. She had been 
when she first married singularly handsome — 
it Avas from her that GustaA’e inherited his beau- 
ty ; and her husband was a A^ery ordinary type 
of the French shop-keeper — very plain, by no 
means intellectual, but gay, good-humored, de* 
votedly attached to his Avife, and with implicit 
trust in her conjugal virtue. Never Avas trust 
better placed. There Avas not a happier nor a 
more fiiithful couple in the quartier in Avhich they 
resided. Madame Rameau hesitated Avhen her 
boy, thinking of Julie, asked if no one had done 
more than send to inquire after liim as Isaura 
had done. 

After that hesitating pause sfte said, “Yes — 
a young lady calling herself Mademoiselle Julie 


167 


THE PAKISIANS. 


Cauniartin wished to install herself here as yonr 
nurse. When I said, ‘But I am his mother — 
he needs no other nurses,’ she would have retreat- 
ed, and looked ashamed — poor thing! I don’t 
blame her if she loved my son. But, my son, I 
say this — if you love her, don’t talk to me about 
that Mademoiselle Cicogna; and if you love 
Mademoiselle Cicogna, why, then, your father 
will take care that the poor girl who loved you 
— not knowing that you loved another — is not 
left to the temptation of penury.” 

Rameau’s pale lips withered into a phantom- 
like sneer. Julie ! the resplendent Julie ! — true, 
only a ballet-dancer, but whose equipage in the 
Bois had once been the envy of duchesses — Ju- 
lie! who had sacrificed fortune for his sake — 
who, freed from him, could have millionnaires 
again at her feet — Julie! to be saved from pen- 
ury, as a shop-keeper would save an erring nurse- 
maid — Julie! the irrepressible Julie! who had 
written to him, the day before his illness, in a 
pen dipped, not in ink, but in blood from a vein 
she had opened in her arm : “ Traitor ! — I have 
not seen yon for three days. Dost thou dare to 
love another ? If so — I care not how thou at- 
tempt to conceal it — woe to her ! Ingrat ! woe 
to thee ! Love is not love, unless, when betrayed 
by love, it apj)enls to death. Answer me quick — 
quick. Julie.” 

Poor Gustave thought of that letter and groan- 
ed. Certainly his mother rvas right — he ought 
to get rid of Julie; but he did not clearly see 
how' Julie was to be got rid of. He replied to 
Madame Rameau, peevishly, “Don’t trouble your 
head about Mademoiselle Caumartin ; she is in 
no want of money. Of course, if I could hope 
for Isaura — but, alas ! I dare not hope. Give me 
my tisane." 

When the doctor called next day he looked 
grave, and, drawing Madame Rameau into the 
next room, he said, “We are not getting on so 
well as I had hoped ; the fever is gone, but there 
is much to apprehend from the debility left l)e- 
hind. His spirits are sadly depressed.” Then 
added the doctor, pleasantly, and with that won- 
derful insight into our complex humanity in 
wdiich physicians excel poets, and in which Pa- 
risian physicians are hot excelled by any physi- 
cians in the world, “Can’t you think of any bit 
of good new'S — that ‘M. Thiers raves about your 
son's last poem’ — that ‘it is a question among 
the Academicians between him and Jules Janin’ 

— or that ‘the beautiful Duchesse de has 

been placed in a lunatic asylum because she has 
gone mad for love of a certain young Red Re- 
publican whose name begins with R.’ — can’t you 
think of any bit of similar good news? If you 
can, it will be a tonic to the relaxed state of your 
^Qnvhoy' s amour propre, compared to which all the 
drugs in the Pharmacopoeia are moonshine and 
water; and meanwhile be sure to remove him 
to your own house, and out of the reach of his 
giddy young friends, as soon as you possibly 
can.” 

When that great authority thus left his pa- 
tient’s case in the hands of the mother, she said, 
“ The boy shall be saved.” 


CHAPTER XIII. 

Is AUK A was seated beside the Venosta — tc 
whom, of late, she seemed to cling with greater 
fondness than ever — working at some piece of 
embroidery — a labor from which she had been 
estranged for years ; but now she had taken 
writing, reading, music, into passionate disgust. 
Isaura was thus seated, silently intent upon her 
W'ork, and the Venosta in full talk, when the 
servant announced Madame Rameau. 

The name startled both ; the Venosta had 
never heard that the poet had a mother living, 
and immediately jumped to the conclusion that 
Madame Rameau must be a wife he had hither- 
to kept unrevealed. And when a woman, still 
very handsome, with a countenance grave and 
sad, entered the salon, the Venosta murmured, 
“The husband’s perfidy reveals itself on a wife’s 
face,” and took out her handkerchief in prepara- 
tion for sympathizing tears. 

“ Mademoiselle,” said the visitor, halting, with 
eyes fixed on Isaura, “pardon my intrusion — 
my son has the honor to be known to you. Ev- 
ery one who knows him must share in my sorrow 
— so young — so promising, and in such danger 
— my poor boy !” Madame Rameau stopped ab- 
ruptly. Her tears forced their way — she turned 
aside to conceal them. 

In her twofold condition of being — woman- 
hood and genius — Isaura was too largely en- 
dow'ed with that quickness of sympathy which 
distinguishes woman from man, and genius from 
talent, not to be wondrously susceptible to pity. 

Already she had wound her arm round the 
grieving mother — already drawn her to the seat 
from which she herself had risen — and bending 
over her had said some words — true, convention- 
al enough in themselves, but cooed forth in a 
voice the softest I ever expect to hear, save in 
dreams, on this side of the grave. 

Madame Rameau swept her hand over her 
eyes, glanced round the room, and noticing the 
Venosta in dressing-robe and slippers, staring 
Avith those Italian eyes, in seeming so quietly 
innocent, in reality so searchingly shrewd, she 
Avhispered, pleadingly, “May I speak to you a 
few minutes alone?” This was not a request 
that Isaura could refuse, though she Avas embar- 
rassed and troubled by the surmise of Madame 
Rameau’s object in asking it; accordingly she 
led her visitor into the adjoining room, and mak- 
ing an apologetic sign to the Venosta, closed the 
door. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

When they Avere alone, Madame Rameau took 
Isaura’s hand in both her OAvn, and, gazing 
Avistfully into her face, said, “No Avonder you 
are so loA'ed — yours is the beauty that sinks into 
the heart and rests there. I prize my boy more, 
noAv that I haA-e seen you. But oh, made- 
moiselle ! pardon me — do not AvithdraAv your 
hand — pardon the mother who comes from the 
sick-bed of her only son and asks if you Avill as- 
sist to saA^e him! A Avord from you is life or 
death to him !” 

“ Nay, nay, do not speak thus, madame ; your 
son knoAvs hoAV much I value, hoAv sincerely I re- 
turn, his friendship ; but — but” — she paused a 


THE PAEISIANS. 


168 

moment, and continued, sadly and with tearful 
eyes, “ 1 have no heart to give to him — to any 
one.” 

“ I do not — I would not if I dared — ask what 
it would be violence to yourself to promise. I 
do not ask you to bid me return to my son and 
say, ‘ Hope and recover;’ but let me take some 
healing message from your lips. If I understand 
your words rightly, I at least may say that you 
do not give to another the hopes you deny to 
him?” 

“ So far you understand me rightly, madame. 
It has been said that romance-writers give away 
so much of their hearts to heroes or heroines of 
their own creation that they leave nothing worth 
the giving to human beings like themselves. 
Perhaps it is so ; yet, madame,” added Isaura, 
with a smile of exquisite sweetness in its melan- 
choly, “ I have heart enough left to feel for you.” 

Madame Kameau was touched. “Ah, made- 
moiselle, I do not believe in the saying you have 
quoted. But I must not abuse your goodness 
by pressing further upon you subjects from which 
you shrink. Only one word more : you know 
that my husband and I are but quiet trades-folk, 
not in the society, nor aspiring to it, to which my 
son’s talents have raised himself ; yet dare I ask 
that you will not close here the acquaintance 
that I have obtruded on you ? — dare I ask that 
I may now and then call on you — that now' and 
then I may see you at my own home ? Believe 
that I would not here ask any thing which your 
own mother would disapprove if she overlooked 
disparities of station. Humble as our home is, 
slander never passed its threshold.” 

“Ah, madame, I and the Signora Venosta, 
whom in our Italian tongue I call mother, can 
but feel honored and grateful wdienever it pleases 
you to receive visits from us.” 

‘ ‘ It would be a base return for such gracious 
compliance with my request if I concealed from 
you the reason why I pray Heaven to bless you 
for that answ^er. The physician says that it may 
be long before my son is sufficiently convales- 
cent to dispense with a mother’s care, and re- 
sume his former life and occupation in the great 
w'orld. It is every thing for us if we can coax 
him into coming under our otvn roof-tree. This 
is difficult to do. It is natural for a young man 
launched into the w’orld to like his own chez lui. 
Then what will happen to Gustave ? He, lone- 
ly and heart-stricken, will ask friends, young as 
himself, but far stronger, to come and cheer him, 
or he will seek to distract his thoughts by the 
overwork of his brain : in either case he is 
doomed. But I have stronger motives yet to fix 
him a w'hile at our hearth. This is just the mo- 
ment, once lost never to be regained, tvhen sooth- 
ing companionship, gentle reproachless advice, 
can fix him lastingly in the habits and modes of 
life which will banish all fears of his future from 
the hearts of his parents. You at least honor 
him with friendship, with kindly interest — you 
at least would desire to wean him from all that a 
friend may disapprove or lament — a creature 
whom Providence meant to be good, and perhaps 
great. If I say to him, ‘ It will be long before 
you can go out and see your friends, but at my 
house your friends shall come and see you — 
among them Signora Venosta and Mademoiselle 
Cicogna will now and then drop in’ — my victory 
is gained, and my son is saved.” 


“Madame,” said Isaura, half sobbing, “what 
a blessing to have a mother like you ! Love so, 
noble ennobles those who hear its voice. Tell 
your son how ardently I wish him to be well and 
to fulfill more than the promise of his genius ; 
tell him also this — how I envy him his mother.” 


CHAPTER XV. 

It needs no length of words to inform thee, my 
intelligent reader, be thou man or w'oman — but 
more especially woman — of the consequences fol- 
lowing each other, as wave follows v/ave in a 
tide, that resulted from the interview with which 
my last chapter closed. Gustave is removed to 
his parents’ house. He remains for weeks con- 
fined within-doors, or, on sunny days, taken an 
hour or so in his own carriage, drawn by the 
horse bought from Rochebriant, into by-roads 
remote from the fashionable world. Isaura vis- 
its his mother, liking, respecting, influenced by 
her more and more : in those visits she sits beside 
the sofa on which Rameau reclines. Gradually, 
gently — more and more by his mother’s lijjs — is 
impressed on her the belief that it is in her pow- 
er to save a human life, and to animate his ca- 
reer toward those goals which are never based 
wholly upon earth in the earnest eyes of genius, 
or perhaps in the yet more upward vision of 
pure-souled believing woman. 

And Gustave himself, as he passes through the 
slow stages of convalescence, seems so gratefully 
to ascribe to her every step in his progress — 
seems so gently softened in character — seems so 
refined from the. old affectations — so ennobled 
above the old cynicism — and, above all, so need- 
ing her presence, so sunless without it, that — 
well, need I finish the sentence ? The reader 
will complete what I leave unsaid. 

Enough that one day Isaura returned home 
from a visit at Madame Rameau’s with the knowl- 
edge that her hand was pledged — her future life 
disposed of — and that, escaping from the Venos- 
ta, whom she so fondly, and in her hunger for a 
mother’s love, called Madre, the girl shut her- 
self up in her own room with locked doors. 

Ah, poor child ! ah, sweet-voiced Isaura ! 
whose delicate image I feel myself too rude ajid 
too hard to transfer to this page in the purity of its 
outlines and the blended softnesses of its hues ! 
— thou, who when saying things serious in the 
words men use, saidst them with a seriousness 
so charming, and with looks so ferninine ! — thou, 
of whom no man I ever knew was quite worthy! 
— ah ! poor, simple, miserable girl, as I see thee 
noAv in the solitude of that w'hite-curtained vir- 
ginal room ! Hast thou, then, merged at last 
thy peculiar star into the cluster of all these com- 
monplace girls whose lips have said “Ay,” when 
their hearts said “No?” — thou, O brilliant Isau- 
ra 1 thou, O poor motherless child ! 

She had sunk into her chair — her own favor- 
ite chair — the covering of it had been embroid- 
ered by Madame de Grantmesnil, and bestow'ed 
on her as a birthday present last year — the year 
in which she had first learned what it is to love 
— the year in which she had first learned w'hat 
it is to strive for fame. And somehow unit- 
ing, as many young people do, love and fame in 
dreams of the future, that silken seat had been 


THE PARISIANS. 


1G9 


to her as the Tripod of Delphi was to the 
Pythian : she had taken to it, as it were intui- 
tively, in all those hours, whether of joy or sor- 
row, wdien youth seeks to prophesy, and does but 
dream. 

There she sat now, in a sort of stupor — a sort 
of dreary bewilderment — the illusion of the Pyth- 
ian gone — desire of dream and of prophecy alike 
extinct — pressing her hands together, and mut- 
tering to herself, “ What has happened? What 
have I done?” 

Three hours later you would not Have recog- 
nized the same face that you see now. For then 
the bravery, the honor, the loyalty of the girl’s' 
nature had asserted their command. Her promise 
had been given to one man — it could not be re- 
called. Thought itself of any other man must 
be banished. On her hearth lay ashes and tin- 


der — the last remains of every treasured note 
from Graham Vane ; of the hoarded newspaper 
extracts that contained his name ; of the dry 
treatise he had published, and which had made 
the lovely romance-writer first desire “ to know 
something about politics.” Ay, if the treatise 
had been upon fox-hunting, she would have de- 
sired “to know something about that !” Above 
all, yet distinguishable from the rest — as the 
sparks still upon stem and leaf here and there 
faintly glowed and twinkled — the withered flow- 
ers which recorded that happy hour in the arbor, 
and the walks of the forsaken garden — the hour 
in which she had so blissfully pledged herself to 
renounce that career in art wherein fiime would 
have been secured, but which would not have 
united Fame with Love — in dreams evermore 
over now. 


BOOK TENTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

GiLtVHAM Vane heard nothing for months from 
M. Renard, when one morning he received the 
letter I translate : . 

“Monsieur, — I am happy to inform you that 
I have at last obtained one piece of information 
which may lead to a more important discovery'. 
When we parted after our fruitless research in 
Vienna, we had both concurred in the persuasion 
that, for some reason known only to the two la- 
dies themselves, Madame Marigny and Madame 
Duval had exchanged names — that it was Ma- 
dame Marigny who had deceased in the name of 
IMadame Duval, and IMadame Duval who sur- 
vived in that of Marigny’. 

“It was clear to me that the h&au monsieur 
who had visited the false Duval must have been 
cognizant of this exchange of name, and that if 
his name and whereabouts could be ascertained, 
he, in all probability, would know what had be- 
come of the lady who is the object of our re- 
search ; and after the lapse of so many years he 
would probably have very slight motive to pre- 
serve that concealment of facts which might, no. 
doubt, have been convenient at the time. The 
lover of the soi-disant Mademoiselle Duval Avas 
by such accounts as we could gain a man of some 
rank — very possibly a married man ; and the li- 
aison, in short, was one of those which, ivhile they 
last, necessitate precautions and secrecy. 

“Therefore, dismissing all attempts at further 
trace of the missing lady, I resolved to return to 
Vienna as soon as the business that recalled me 
to Paris was concluded, and devote myself ex- 
clusively to the search after the amorous and 
mysterious monsieur. 

“I’did not state this determination to you, 
because, possibly, I might be in error — or, if not 
in error, at least too sanguine in my expectations 
— and it is best to avoid disappointing an honor- 
able client. 

“ One thing was clear, that at the time of the 
soi-disant Duval’s decease the beau monsieur was 
at Vienna. 

“It appeared also tolerably clear that when 


the lady friend of the deceased quitted Munich 
so privately, it was to Vienna she repaired, and 
from Vienna comes the letter demanding the cer- 
•tificates of Madame Duval’s death. Pardon me 
if I remind you of all these circumstances, no 
doubt fresh in your recollection. I repeat them 
in order to justify the conclusions to Avhich they 
led me. 

“ 1 could not, however, get permission to ab- 
sent myself from Paris for the time I might re- 
quire till the end of last April. I had mean- 
while sought all private means of ascertaining 
what Frenchmen of rank and station were in that 
capital in the autumn of 1849. Among the list 
of the very few such messieurs I fixed upon one 
as the most likely to be the most mysterious 
Achille, Achille was, indeed, his nom de hap- 
teine. 

“A man of intrigue — a bonnes fortunes — of ' 
lavish expenditure withal ; very tenacious of his 
dignity, and avoiding any petty scandals by which 
it might be lowered ; just the man who, in some 
passing affiiir of gallantry with a lady of doubt- 
ful repute, would never have signed his titular 
designation to a letter, and would have kept him- 
self as much incognito as he could. But this 
man was dead — had been dead some years. He 
had not died at Vienna. Never visited that cap- 
ital for some years before his death. He was 
then, and had long been, the ami de la maison 
of one of those grandes dames of whose intimacy 
grands seigneurs are' not ashamed. They parade 
there the bonnes fortunes they conceal elseAvhere. 
Monsieur and the grande dame were at Baden 
when the former died. Now, monsieur, a Don 
Juan of that stamp is pretty sure always to have 
a confidential Lcporello. If 1 could find Lepo- 
rello alive I might learn the secrets not to be ex- 
acted from a Don Juan defunct. I ascertained, 
in truth, both at Vienna, to which I first repaired 
in order to verify the renseignements 1 had ob- 
tained at Paris, and at Baden, to which I then 
bent my way, that this brilliant noble had a fa- 
vorite A’alet who had lii’ed Avith him from his 
youth — an Italian Avho had contrived in the 
course of his service to lay by savings enough to 
set up a hotel someAvhere in Italy, supposed to 


170 


THE PARISIANS. 


be Pisa. To Pisa I repaired, but the man had 
left some years ; his liotel had not prospered ; 
he had left in debt. No one could say what had 
become of him. At last, after a long and tedious 
research, I found him installed as manager of a 
small hotel at Genoa — a pleasant fellow enough ; 
and after friendly intercourse with him (of course 
I lodged at his hotel), I easily led him to talk of 
his earlier life and adventures, and especially of 
his former master, of whose splendid career in 
the army of ‘ La Belle Diesse' he was not a little 
proud. It was not very easy to get him to the 
particular subject in question. In fact, the af- 
fair with the poor false Duval had been so brief 
and undistinguished an episode in his master’s 
life that it was not without a strain of memory 
that he reached it. 

“By little and little, however, in the course 
of two or three evenings, and by the aid of many 
flasks of Orviette or bottles of Lacrima (wines, 
monsieur, that I do not commend to any one 
who desires to keep his stomach sound and his 
secrets safe), I gathered these particulars : 

“Our Don Juan, since the loss of a wife in 
the first year of marriage, had rarely visited Par- 
is, where he had a domicile — his ancestral hotel 
tliere he had sold. 

“But happening to visit that capital of Eu- 
rope a few months before we come to our dates 
at Aix-la-Chapelle, he made acquaintance with 
Madame Marigny, a natural daughter of high- 
placed parents, by whom, of course, she had nev- 
er been acknowledged, but who had contrived 
that site should receive a good education at a 
convent; and on leaving it also contrived that 
an old soldier of fortune — which means an officer 
without fortune — who had served in Algiers with 
some distinction, should offer her his hand, and 
add the modest dot they assigned her to his yet 
more modest income. They contrived also that 
she should understand the offer must be accept- 
e<l. Thus Mademoiselle ‘ Quelque Chose' became 
Madame Marigny, and she, on her part, con- 
trived that a year or so later she should be left a 
widow. After her marriage, of course, the par- 
ents washed their hands of her. They had done 
their duty. At the time Don Juan made this 
lady’s acquaintance nothing could be said .against 
her character ; but the milliners and butchers had 
begun to imply that they would rather have her 
money than trust to her character. Don Juan 
fell in love with her, and satisfied the immedi- 
ate claims of milliner and butcher, and when 
they quitted Paris it was agreed that they should 
meet later at Aix-la-Chapelle. But when he re- 
sorted to th.at sultry and, to my mind, unallur- 
ing spa, he was surprised by a line from her say- 
ing that she had changed her name of Marigny 
for that of Duval. 

“ ‘I recollect,’ said Leporello, ‘that two days 
afterward my master said to me, “ Caution and 
secrecy. Don’t mention my name at the house 
to which I may send you with any note for Ma- 
dame Duval. I don’t announce my name when I 
call. Za petite Marigny has exchanged her name 
for that of Louise Duval ; and I find that there is 
a Louise Duval here, her friend, who is niece to 
a relation of my own, and a terrible relation to 
([uarrel with — a dead shot and unrivaled swords- 
man — Victor de Mauleon.” My m.aster was 
brave enough, but he enjoyed life, and he did not 
think la petite Marigny worth being killed for.’ 


“Leporello remembered very little of what 
followed. All he did remember is that Don 
Juan, when at Vienna, said to him one morning, 
looking less g.ay than usual, ‘It is finished with 
la petite Marigny — she is no more.’ Then he 
ordered his bath, wrote a note, and said, with 
tears in his eyes, ‘ Take this to Mademoiselle 
Celeste; not to be compared to la petite Ma- 
rign}’-; but /a Celeste is still alive.’ Ah, 
monsieur ! if only any man in France could be as 
proud of his ruler as that Italian was of my coun- 
tryman I Alas ! we Frenchmen are all Tnade to 
command — or at least we think ourselves so — 
and we are insulted by one who says to us, 
‘Serve and obey.’ Nowadays, in France, we 
find all Don Juans and no Leporellos. 

“ After strenuous exertions upon my part to 
recall to Leporello’s mind the important question 
whether he had ever seen the true Duval, pass- 
ing under the nanie of IMarigny — whether she 
had not presented herself to his master at Vien- 
na or elsewhere — he rubbed his forehead, and 
drew from it these reminiscences : 

“ ‘ On the day that his Excellency’ (Leporello 
generally so styled his master — ‘ Excellency,’ 
as you are aware, is the title an Italian w’ould 
give to Satan if taking his wages) ‘ told me that 
la petite Marigny was no more he had received 
previously a lady veiled and mantled, whom I 
did not recognize as 'any one I had seen before, 
but I noticed her way of Carrying herself — haugh- 
tily^ — her head thrown back ; and I thought to 
myself, that lady is one of his qrandes dames. 
She did call again two or three times, never an- 
nouncing her name; then she did not re-appear. 
She might be Madame Duval — I can’t say.’ 

“‘But did you never hear his Excellency 
speak of the real Duval after that time ?’ 

“ ‘No — non mi ricordo — I don't remember.’ 

“‘Nor of some living Madame Marigny, 
though the real one was dead ?’ 

“‘Stop — I do recollect; not that he ever 
named such a person to me, but that I have 
posted letters for him to a Madame Marigny — 
oh yes — even years after the said petite IMarigny 
was dead ; and once I did venture to s.ay, “ Par- 
don me, Eccellenza, but m.ay I ask if that poor 
lady is really dead, since I haA'e to prepay this 
letter to her?” “ Oh !” said he, “ Madame Ma- 
rigny ! Of course the one you know is dead, 
but there are others of the same name ; this 
lady is of my family. Indeed, her house, though 
noble in itself, recognizes the representative of 
mine as its head, and I am too hon prince not to 
acknowledge and serve any one who branches 
out of my own tree.” ’ 

“A day after this last conversation on the 
subject Leporello said to me, ‘My friend, you 
certainly have some interest in ascertaining what 
became of the lady who took the name of Ma- 
(f state this frankly, monsieur, to show 
how difficult even for one so prudent as I am to 
beat about a bush long but what you let people 
know the sort of bird you are in search of). 

“‘Well,’ said I, ‘she does interest me. I 
knew something of that Victor de Mauleon, 
whom his Excellency did not wish to quarrel 
with, and it would be a kindly act to her rela- 
tion if one could learn what became of Louise 
Duv.al’ 

“ ‘ I can put you on the way of learning all 
that his Excellency was likely to have known 


THE PARISIANS. 


of her through correspondence. I have often 
heard him quote, with praise, a saying so clever 
that it might have been Italian, ‘ ‘ Never write, 
never burn” — that is, never commit yourself by 
a letter — keep all letters that could put others 
in your power. All the letters he received were 
carefully kept and labeled. I sent them to his 
son in four large trunks. His son, no doubt, 
has them still.’ 

“Now, however, I have exhausted my budget. 
I arrived at Paris last night. I strongly advise 
you to come hither at once, if you still desire to 
prosecute your search. 

“You, monsieur, can do what I could not 
venture to do; you can ask the son of Don Juan 
if amidst the correspondence of his father, which 
he may have preserved, there be any signed Ma- 
rigny or Duval — any, in short, which can throw 
light on this very obscure complication of cir- 
cumstances. A grand seigneur would naturally 
be more complaisant to a man of your station 
than he would be to an agent of police. Don 
Juan’s son, inheriting his father’s title, is Mon- 
sieur le Marquis de Rochebriant. And permit 
me to add that at this moment, as the journals 
doubtless inform you, all Paris resounds with 
the rumor of coming war, and Monsieur de 
Rochebriant, who is, as I have ascertained, now 
in Paris, it may be difficult to find any where 
on earth a month or two hence. I have the hon- 
or, with profound consideration, etc., etc., 

“1. Renard.” 

The day after the receipt of this letter Graham 
Vane was in Paris. 

♦ 

CHAPTER II. 

Among things indescribable is that which is 
called “Agitation” in Paris — “ Agitation” with- 
out riot or violence — showing itself by no disor- 
derly act, no turbulent outburst. Perhaps the 
cafes are more crowded ; passengers in the 
streets stop each other more often, and converse 
in small knots and groups ; yet, on the whole, 
there is little externally to show how loudly the 
heart of Paris is beating. A traveler may be 
passing through quiet landscapes, unconscious 
that a great battle is going on some miles off, 
but if he Avill stop and put his ear to the ground 
he will recognize, by a certain indescribable vi- 
bration, the voice of the cannon. 

But at Paris an acute observer need not stop 
and put his ear to the ground ; he feels within 
himself a vibration — a mysterious inward sym- 
pathy Avhich communicates to the individual a 
conscious thrill — when the passions of the mul- 
titude are stirred, no matter how silently. 

Tortoni’s cafe was thronged when Duplessis and 
Frederic Lemercier entered it. It was in vain 
to order breakfast ; no table was vacant either 
Avithin the rooms or under the aAvnings without. 

But they could not retreat so quickly as they 
had entered. On catching sight of the financier 
seA'eral men rose and gathered round him, eager- 
ly questioning : 

“What do you think, Duplessis? Will any 
insult to France put a drop of warm blood into 
the frigid veins of that miserable Ollivier?” 

“It is not yet clear that France has been in- 


171 

suited, messieurs,” replied Duplessis, phlegmat- 
ically. 

“Bah ! Not insulted ! The very nomination 
of a Hohenzollern to the croAvn of Spaiii Avas an 
insult. What would you haA’e more ?” 

“I tell you Avhat it is, Duplessis,” said the 
Vicomte de Breze, whose habitual light good 
temper seemed exchanged for insolent SAvagger — 
“1 tell you Avhat it is : your friend, the Emper- 
or, has no more courage than a chicken. He is 
grown old and infirm and lazy ; he knoAVS that 
lie can’t even mount on horseback. But if, be- 
fore this day week, he has not declared war on 
the Prussians, he Avill be lucky if he can get off 
as quietly as poor Louis Philippe did under 
shelter of his umbrella, and ticketed ‘Schmidt.’ 
Or could you not, M. Duplessis, send him back 
to London in a bill of exchange ?” 

“For a man of your literary repute, M. le Vi- 
comte,” said Duplessis, “you indulge in a strange 
profusion of metaphors. But, pardon me, I came 
here to breakfast, and I can not remain to quar- 
rel. Come, Lemercier, let us take our chance 
of a cutlet at the Trois Frhes.” 

“Fox! Fox!” cried Lemercier, whistling to a 
poodle that had folloAved him into the cafe, and, 
frightened by the sudden movement and loud 
voices of the habitues, had taken refuge under 
the table. 

“ Your dog is poltron,'^ said De Breze ; “ call 
him Nap.” 

At this stroke of humor there Avas a general 
laugh, in the midst of which Duplessis escaped, 
and Frederic, having discoA'ered and caught his 
dog, folloAved with that animal tenderly clasped 
in his arms. 

“I Avould not lose Fox for a great deal,” said 
Lemercier, Avith effusion ; “a pledge of love and 
fidelity from an English lady the most distin- 
guished. The lady left me — the dog remains.” 

Duplessis smiled grimly. “ What a thorough- 
bred Parisian you are, my dear Frederic. I be- 
lieve if the trump of the last angel Avere sound- 
ing, the Parisians Avould be divided into tAvo sets : 
one Avould be singing the Marseillaise, and pa- 
rading the red flag ; the other would be shrugging 
their shoulders, and saying, ‘ Bah ! as if le Bon 
Dieu Avould have the bad taste to injure Paris — 
the Seat of the Graces, the School of the Arts, 
the Fountain of Reason, the Eye of the World ;’ 
and so be found by the destroying angel caressing 
poodles and making hons mots about les femmes ” 

“And quite right too,” said Lemercier, com- 
placently. “What other people in the Avorld 
could retain lightness of heart under circum- 
stances so unpleasant? But Avhy do you take 
things so solemnly ? Of course there Avill be Avar 
— idle noAv to talk of explanations and excuses. 
When a Frenchman says, ‘I am insulted,’ he is 
not going to be told that he is not insulted. He 
means fighting and not apologizing. But Avhat 
if there be AA’ar ? Our brave soldiers beat the 
Prussians — take the Rhine — return to Paris co\'- 
ered Avith laurels — a ncAV Boulevard de Berlin 
eclipses the Boulevard Sebastopol. By-the-AA’^ay, 
Duplessis, a Boulevard de Berlin Avill be a good 
speculation — better than the Rue de Louvier, 
Ah ! is not that my English friend, Grarm- 
Varn ?” Here quitting the arm of Duplessis, Le- 
mercier stopped a gentleman who Avas about to 
pass him unnoticing. Bonjour, mon ami, how 
long have you been at Paris?” 


172 


THE PARISIANS. 


“I only arrived last evening,” answered Gra- 
ham, “and my stay may be so short that it is a 
piece of good luck, my dear Lemercier, to meet 
with you, and exchange a cordial shake of the 
hand. ” 

“We are just going to breakfast at the Trois 
Frh'cs — Duplessis and I. Pray join us.” 

“With great pleasure. — Ah! Monsieur Du- 
plessis, I shall be glad to hear from you that 
the Emperor will be firm enougli to check the 
advances of that martial fever which, to judge 
by the persons I meet, seems to threaten de- 
lirium.” 

Duplessis looked very keenly at Graham’s face 
as he replied, slowly: “The English, at least, 
ought to know that when the Emperor by his 
last reforms resigned his personal authority for 
constitutional monarchy, it ceased to be a ques- 
tion whether he could or could not be firm in 
matters that belonged to the Cabinet and the 
Chambers. I presume that if Monsieur Glad- 
stone advised Queen Victoria to declare war upon 
the Emperor of Russia, backed by a vast major- 
ity in Parliament, you would think me very ig- 
norant of constitutional monarchy and Parlia- 
mentary government if I said, ‘ I hope Queen 
Victoria will resist that martial fever.’ ” 

“You rebuke me very fairly, M. Duplessis, if 
you can show me that the two cases are analo- 
gous ; but we do not understand in England 
that, despite his last reforms, the Emperor has 
so abnegated his individual ascendency that his 
will, clearly and resolutely expressed, would not 
prevail in his Council and silence opposition in 
the Chambers. Is it so ? I ask for information. ” 

The three men were walking on toward the 
Palais Royal side by side while this conversa- 
tion proceeded. 

“That all depends,” replied Duplessis, “upon 
what may be the incisease of popular excitement 
at Paris. If it slackens, the Emperor, no doubt, 
could turn to wise account that favorable pause 
in the fever. But if it continues to swell, and 
Paris cries, ‘ War,’ in a voice as loud as it cried 
to Louis Philippe, 'Revolution,’ do you think 
that the Emperor could impose on his ministers 
the wisdom of peace ? His ministers would be 
too terrified by the clamor to undertake the re- 
sponsibility of opposing it — they would resign. 
Where is the Emperor to find another Cabinet ? 
— a peace Cabinet ? What and who are the ora- 
tors for peace ? What a handful ! Who ? Gam- 
betta, Jules Favre, avowed Republicans. Would 
they even accept the post of ministers to Louis 
Napoleon ? If they did, would not their first 
step be the abolition of the empire? Napoleon 
is, therefore, so far a constitutional monarch in 
the same sense as Queen Victoria that the pop- 
ular will in the country (and in France in such 
matters Paris is the country) controls the Cham- 
bers,. controls the Cabinet ; and against the Cab- 
inet the Emperor could not contend. I say noth- 
ing of the army — a power in France unknown 
to you in England, which would certainly fra- 
ternize with no peace party. If war is pro- 
claimed, let England blame it if she will — she 
can’t lament it more than I should — but let En- 
gland blame the nation; let her blame, if she 
please, the form of the government which rests 
upon popular suffrage, but do not let her blame 
our sovereign more than the French would blame 
her own, if compelled by the conditions on which 


she holds her crown to sign a declaration of 
war which vast majorities in a Parliament just 
elected, and a council of ministers whom she 
could not practically replace, enforced upon her 
will.” 

“ Your observations, M. Duplessis, impress 
me strongly, and add to the deep anxieties with 
which, in common with all my countrymen, I re- 
gard the menacing aspect of the present hour. 
Let us hope the best. Our government, I know, 
is exerting itself to the utmost verge of its pow- 
er to remove every just ground of offense that 
the unfortunate nomination of a German prince 
to the Spanish throne could not fail to have given 
to French statesmen.” 

“ I am glad you concede that such a nomina- 
tion was a just ground of offense,” said Lemer- 
cier, rather bitterly, “for I have met English- 
men who asserted that France had no right to re- 
sent any choice of a sovereign that Spain might 
make.” 

“ Englishmen in general are not very reflective 
politicians in foreign affairs,” said Graham ; “ but 
those who are must see that France could not, 
without alarm the most justifiable, contemplate a 
cordon of hostile states being drawn around her 
on all sides — Germany, in itself so formidable 
since the field of Sadowa, on the east ; a German 
prince in the southwest ; the not improbable al- 
liance between Prussia and the Italian kingdom, 
already so alienated from the France to which it 
owed so much. If England would be uneasy 
were a great maritime power possessed of Ant- 
werp, how much more uneasy might France just- 
ly be if Prussia could add the armies of Spain to 
those of Germany, and launch them both upon 
France ? But that cause of alarm is over — the 
Hohenzollern is withdrawn. Let us hope for the 
best.” 

The three men had now seated themselves at 
a table in the Trois Freres, and Lemercier vol- 
unteered the task of inspecting the menu and or- 
dering the repast, still keeping guard on Fox. 

“ Observe that man,” said Duplessis, pointing 
toward a gentleman who had just entered ; “ the 
other day he was the popular hero — now, in the 
excitement of threatened \var, he is permitted to 
order his hiftech uncongratulated, uncaressed. 
Such is fame at Paris !— here to-day and gone to- 
morrow.” 

“ How did the man become famous?” 

“ He is a painter, and refused a decoration — 
the only French painter who ever did.” 

“And why refuse ?” 

“Because he is more stared at as the man 
who refused than he would have been as the man 
who accepted. If ever the Red Republicans have 
their day, those among them most certain of hu- 
man condemnation will be the coxcombs who 
have gone mad from the desire of human ap- 
plause. ” 

“You are a profound philosopher, M. Du- 
plessis.” 

“I hope not : I have an especial contempt for 
philosophers. Pardon me a moment — I see a 
man to whom I would say a word or two.” 

Duplessis crossed over to another table to 
speak to a middle-aged man of somewhat re- 
markable countenance, with the red ribbon in his 
button-hole, in whom Graham recognized an ex- 
minister of the Emperor, differing from most of 
those at that day in his Cabinet, in the reputa- 


THE PARISIANS. 


tion of being loyal to his master and courageous 
against a mob. 

Left thus alone with Lemeroier, Graham said : 

‘ ‘ Pray tell me where I can find your friend the 
Marquis de Rochebriant. I called at his apart- 
ment this morning, and I was told that he had 
gone on some visit into the country, taking his 
valet, and the concierge could not give me his 
address. I thought myself so lucky on meeting 
with you who are sure to know.” 

“No, I do not; it is some days since I saw 
Alain. But Duplessis will be sure to know.” 
Here the finaneier rejoined them. 

Mon cher^ Grarm-Varn wants to know for 
W'hat Sabine shades Rochebriant has deserted the 
^fumuvi opes strepitumque' of the capital.” 

“Ah ! the Marquis is a friend of yours, mon- 
sieur ?” 

“I can scarcely boast that honor, but he is an 
acquaintance whom I should be very glad to see 
again.” 

“At this moment he is at the Duchesse de 
Tarascon’s country house near Fontainebleau : I 
had a hurried line from him two days ago stating 
that he was going there on her urgent invitation. 
But he may return to-morrow ; at all events, he 
dines with me on the 8th, and I shall be charmed 
if you will do me the honor to meet him at my 
house.” 

“It is an invitation too agreeable to refuse, 
and I thank you very much for it.” 

Nothing worth recording passed further in con- 
versation between Graham and the two French- 
men. He left them smoking their cigars in the 
garden, and walked homeward by the Rue di 
Rivoli. As he was passing beside the Magasin 
du Louvre he stopped and made way for a lady 
crossing quickly out of the shop toward her car- 
riage at the door. Glancing at him with a slight 
inclination of her head, in acknowledgment of his 
courtesy, the lady recognized his features. 

“Ah, Mr. Vane!” she cried, almost joyfully, 
“you are, then, at Paris, though you have not 
come to see me.” 

“ I only arrived last night, dear Mrs. Morley,” 
said Graham, rather embarrassed, “and only on 
some matters of business which unexpectedly 
summoned me. My stay will probably be very 
short.” 

“ In that case let me rob you of a few minutes 
— no, not rob you even of them ; I can take you 
wherever you want to go, and as my carriage 
moves more quickly than you do on foot, I shall 
save you the minutes instead of robbing you of 
them.” 

“You are most kind, but I was only going to 
my hotel, which is close by.” 

‘ ‘ Then you have no excuse for not taking a short 
drive with me in the Champs Ely sees. Come.” 

Thus bidden, Graham could not civilly dis- 
obey. He handed the fair American into her 
carriage, and seated himself by her side. 


CHAPTER III. 

“ Mil. Vane, I feel as if I had many apologies 
to make for the interest in your life which my 
letter to you so indiscreetly betrayed.” 

“Oh, Mrs. Morley! you can not guess how 
deeply that interest touched me. ” 


173 

“I should not have presumed so far,” contin- 
ued Mrs. Morley, unheeding the interruption, 
“if I had not been altogether in error as to the 
nature of your sentiments in a certain quarter. 
In this you must blame my American rearing. 
With us there are many flirtations between boys 
and girls which come to nothing; but when in 
my country a man like you meets with a woman 
like Mademoiselle Cicogna there can not be flir- 
tation. His attentions, his looks, his manner, 
reveal to the eyes of those who care enough for 
him to watch, one of two things — either he cold- 
ly admires and esteems, ox he loves with his whole 
heart and soul, a woman worthy to inspire such 
a love. Well, I did watch, and I was absurdly 
mistaken. I imagined that I saw love, and re- 
joiced for the sake of both of you to think so. 
I know that in all countries, our own as well as 
yours, love is so morbidly sensitive and jealous 
that it is always apt to invent imaginary foes to 
itself. Esteem and admiration never do that. 
I thought that some misunderstanding, easily re- 
moved by the intervention of a third person, 
might have imj)eded the impulse of two hearts 
toward each other, and so I "wrote. I had as- 
sumed that you loved — I am humbled to the last 
degree — you only admired and esteemed.” 

“ Your irony is very keen, Mrs. Morley, and 
to you it may seem very just. ” 

“Don’t call me Mrs. Morley in that haughty 
tone of voice. Can’t you talk to me as you would 
talk to a friend? You only esteemed and ad- 
mired — there is an end of it.” 

“ No, there is not an end of it,” cried Graham, 
giving way -to an impetuosity of passion which 
rarely, indeed, before another escaped his self- 
control; “the end of it to me is a life out of 
which is ever stricken such love as I could feel 
for woman. To me true lore can only come 
once. It came with my first look on that fatal 
face ; it has never left me in thought by day, in 
dreams by night. The end of it to me is fare- 
well to all such happiness as the one love of a life 
can promise ; but — ” 

“But what?” asked Mrs. Morley, softly, and 
very much moved by the passionate earnestness 
of Graham’s voice and words. 

“But,” he continued, with a forced smile, 
“ we Englishmen are trained to the resistance 
of absolute authority ; we can not submit all the 
elements that make up our being to the sway of 
a single despot. Love is the painter of exist- 
ence ; it should not be its sculptor.” 

“I don’t understand the metaphor.” 

‘ ‘ Love colors our life ; it should not chisel its 
form.” 

“My dear Mr. Vane, that is very cleverly 
said, but the human heart is too large and too 
restless to be quietly packed up in an aphorism. 
Do you mean to tell me that if you found you 
had destroyed Isaura Cicogna’s happiness as well 
as resigned your own, that thought would not 
somewhat deform the very shape you would give 
to your life ? Is it color alone that your life 
would lose ?” 

“Ah, Mrs. Morley, do not lower your friend 
into an ordinary girl in whom idleness exagger- 
ates the strength of any fancy over which it 
dreamily broods. Isaura Cicogna has her oc- 
cupations — her genius — her fame — her career. 
Honestly speaking, I think that in these she will 
find a happiness that no quiet hearth could be- 


174 


THE PARISIANS. 


stow. I will say no more. I feel persuaded that 
were we two united I could not make her happy. 
With the irresistible impulse that urges the gen- 
ius of the writer tow’ard its vent in public sym- 
pathy and applause, she would chafe if I said, 
‘Be content to be wholly mine.’ And if I said 
it not, and felt I had no right to say it, and al- 
lowed the full scope to her natural ambition, 
what then? She would chafe yet more to find 
that I had no fellowship in her aims and ends — 
that where I should feel pride I felt humilia- 
tion. It would be so ; I can not help it; ’tis my 
nature.” ^ 

“So be it, then. When next year, perhaps, 
you visit Paris, you will be safe IVom my officious 
interference — Isaura will be the wife of another.” 

Graham pressed his hand to his heart w ith the 
sudden movement of one who feels there an 
agonizing spasm. His cheeks, his very lips, w'ere 
bloodless. 

“I told you,” he said, bitterly, “that your 
fears of my influence over the happiness of one 
so gifted, and so strong in such gifts, were ground- 
less ; you allow that I should be A’ery soon for- 
gotten ?” 

“I allow no such thing; I w'ish I could. But 
do )'Ou know so little of a w^oman’s heart (and in 
matters of heart I never yet heard that genius 
had a talisman against emotion) — do you know 
so little of a w'oman’s heart as not to know that 
the very moment in which she may accept a mar- 
riage the least fitted to render her happy is that 
in which she lost all hope of happiness in an- 
other ?” 

“ Is it indeed so ? ’ murmured Graham. “ A}', 
I can conceive it.” 

“And have you so little comprehension of the 
necessities which that fame, that career to which 
you allow’ she is impelled by the instincts of gen- 
ius, impose on this girl, young, beautiful, father- 
less, motherless ? No matter how pure her life, 
can she guard it from the slander of envious 
tongues ? Will not all her truest friends — w'ould 
not you, if 3"ou w'ere her brother — press upon her 
by all the arguments that have most w’eight w-ith 
the woman who asserts independence in her modes 
of life, and yet is wise enough to know that the 
world can only judge of virtue by its shadow — 
reputation — not to dispense with the protection 
which a husband can alone secure ? And that 
is w'hy I w arn you, if it be j'et time, that in re- 
signing 3’our ow'n happiness j’ou may destroy 
Isaura’s. She will wed another, but she will not 
be happy. What a chimera of dread your ego- 
tism as man conjures up ! Oh, forsooth ! the 
qualities that charm and delight a w’orld are to 
unfit a woman to be helpmate to a man. Fie on 
)’Ou ! — fie !” 

Whatever answer Graham might have made to 
these impassioned reproaches w'as here checked. 

Tw'o men on horseback stopped the carriage. 
One was Enguerrand de Vandemar, the other 
was the Algerine Colonel whom we met at the 
supper given at the Maison Dorde by Frederic 
Lemercier. 

‘‘‘‘Pardon, Madame I^Iorley,” said Enguer- 
rand; “but there are symptoms of a mob epi- 
demic a little further up ; the fever began at 
Belleville, and is threatening the health of the 
Champs Elysees. Don’t be alarmed — it may be 
nothing, though it may be much. In Paris one 
can never calculate an hour beforehand the exact 


progress of a politico-epidemic fever. At pres- 
ent I sav’, ‘ Bah ! a pack of ragged boys, gamins 
de Paris but my friend the Colonel, twisting 
his moustache en sourient amerement, sa3’s, ‘It is 
the indignation of Paris at the apathy of the gov- 
ernment under insult to the honor of France;’ 
and Heaven only know’s how rapidly French ga- 
mins grow into giants when colonels talk about the 
indignation of Paris and the honor of France!” 

“But wdiat has happened?” asked Mrs. Mor-. 
Ie3’, turning to the Colonel. 

.“Madame,” replied the warrior, “it is ru- 
mored that the King of Prussia has turned his 
back upon the embassador of France, and that 
the pchin who is for peace at any price — M. 01 - 
livier — will say to-morrow in the Chamber that 
France submits to a slap in the face.” 

“Please, Monsieur de Vandemar, to tell my 
coachman to drive home,” said Mrs. Morle3\ 

The carriage turned and went homew’ard. 
The Colonel lifted his hat, and rode back to see 
what the gamins w'ere about. Enguerrand, w’ho 
had no interest in the gamins, and w’ho looked 
on the Colonel as a bore, rode by the side of the 
carriage. 

“Is there any thing serious in this?” asked 
Mrs. Morley. 

“At this moment, nothing. What it may be 
this hour to-morrow I can not sa\’. Ah, Mon- 
sieur Vane, honjotir — I did not recognize you 
at first. Once, in a visit at the chateau of one 
of your distinguished countr3’men, I saw tw’o 
game-cocks turned out facing each other: they 
needed no pretext for quarreling — neither do 
France and Prussia; no matter wdiicli game- 
cock gave the first offense, the tw’o game-cocks 
must have it out. All that Ollivier can do, if 
he be wise, is to see that the French cock has 
his steel spurs as long as the Prussian’s. But 
this I do say, that if Ollivier attempts to put the 
French cock back into its bag, the empire is 
gone in forty-eight hours. That to me is a trifle 
— I care nothing for the empire ; but that which 
is not a trifle is anarchy and chaos. Better war 
and the empire than peace and Jules Favre. 
But let us seize the present hour, Mr. Vane; 
whatever happens to-morrow', shall v^e dine to- 
gether to-day? Name your restaurant?” 

“I am so grieved, ” answ’ered Graham, rous- 
ing himself — “I am here only on business, and 
engaged all the evening.” 

“ What a wonderful thing is this life of ours !” 
said Enguerrand. “The destin3’ of France at 
this moment hangs on a thread. I, a French- 
man, say to an English friend, ‘ Let us dine — a 
cutlet to-day and a fig for to-morrow;’ and mv 
English friend, distinguished native of a coun- 
try with which w’e have the closest alliance, tells 
me that in this crisis of France he has business 
to attend to! My father is quite right; he ac- 
cepts the Voltairean philosoph3', and cries, Vi- 
vent les indifferents !" 

“My dear M. de Vandemar,” said Graham, 
“ in every countiy 3-011 will find the same thing. 
All individuals massed together constitute^pub- 
lic life. Each individual has a life of his own, 
the claims and the habits and the needs of 
w’hich do not suppress his sympathies W’ith pub- 
lic life, but imperioush’ overrule them. Mrs. 
Morley, permit me to pull the check-string; I 
get out here.” 

“I like that man,” said Enguerrand, as he 


THE PARISIANS. 


175 


continued to ride by the fair American; “in 
language and esprit he is so French.” 

“I used to like him better than you can,” 
answered Mrs. Morley; “but in prejudice and 
stupidity he is so English. As it seems you are 
disengaged, come and partake, pot au feu^ with 
Frank and me.” 

“Charmed to do so,” answered the cleverest 
and best bred of all Parisian beaux garfons, 
“ but forgive me if I quit you soon. This poor 
France ! Eutre nous, I am very uneasy about 
the Parisian fever. I must run away after din- 
ner to clubs and cafes to learn the last bulletins.” 

“We have nothing like that French Legiti- 
mist in the States,” said the fair American to 
herself, “unless we should ever be so silly as to 
make Legitimists of the ruined gentlemen of the 
South.” 

Meanwhile Graham Vane went slowly back 
to his apartment. No false excuse had he made 
to Enguerrand : this evening was devoted to M. 
llenard, who told him little he had not known 
before ; but his private life overruled his public, 
and all that night he, professed politician, thought 
sleeplessly, not over the crisis to France, which 
might alter the conditions of Europe, but the talk 
on his private life of that intermeddling American 
woman. 


CHAPTER IV. 

The next day, Wednesday, July 6, com- 
menced one of those eras in the world’s history 
in which private life would vainly boast that it 
overrules Life Public. How many private lives 
tioes such a terrible time influence, absorb, dark- 
en with sorrow, crush into graves ? 

It was the day when the Due de Gramont ut- 
tered the fatal speech which determined the die 
between peace and war. No one not at Paris 
on that day can conceive the popular enthusiasm 
with which that speech was hailed — the greater 
because the warlike tone of it was not antici- 
pated — because there had been a rumor amidst 
circles the best informed that a speech of pacific 
moderation was to be the result of the Imperial 
Council. Rapturous indeed were the applauses 
■with which the sentences that breathed haughty 
defiance were hailed by the Assembly. The la- 
dies in the tribune rose with one accord, waving 
their handkerchiefs. Tall, stalwart, dark, with 
Roman features and lofty presence, the Minister 
of France seemed to say with Catiline in the 
fine tragedy, “Lo! where I stand I am war!” 

Paris had been hungering for some hero of 
the hour — the Due de Gramont became at once 
raised to that eminence. 

All the journals, save the very few which 
were friendly to peace because hostile to the 
Emperor, resounded with praise not only of the 
speech, but of the speaker. It is with a melan- 
choly sense of amusement that one recalls now 
to mind those organs of public opinion — with 
what romantic fondness they dwelt on the per- 
sonal graces of the man who had at last given 
voice to the chivalry of France — “The charm- 
ing gravity of his countenance — the mysterious 
expression of his eye!” 

As the crowd poured from the Chambers, 
Victor de Mauleon and Savarin, who had been 
among the listeners, encountered. 


“No chance for my friends the Orleanists 
now,” said Savarin. “You who mock at all 
parties are, I suppose, at heart for the Republic- 
an — small chance, too, for that.” 

“I do not agree with you. Violent impulses 
have quick reactions.” 

“But what reaction could shake the Emperor 
after he returns a conqueror, bringing in his 
pocket the left bank of the Rhine?” 

“None — when he does that. Will he do it? 
Does he himself think he will do it ? I doubt — ” 

“ Doubt the French army against the Prus- 
sian ?” 

“Against the German people united — yes, 
very much.” 

“But war will disunite the German people. 
Bavaria will surely assist us — Hanover will rise 
against the spoliator — Austria at our first success- 
es must shake oft'her present enforced neutrality?” 

“You have not been in Germany, and I have. 
What yesterday was a Prussian army to-mor- 
row will be a German population, far exceed- 
ing our own in numbers, in hardihood of body, 
in cultivated intellect, in military discipline. 
But talk of something else. How is my ex- 
editor — poor Gustave Rameau ?” 

“ Still very weak, but on the mend. Y'ou may 
have him back in his office soon.” 

“Impossible! even in his sick-bed his vanity 
was more vigorous than ever. He issued a war- 
song, which has gone the rounds of the war jour- 
nals, signed by his own name. He must have 
known very well that the name of such a Tyrtseus 
can not reappear as the editor of Le Sens Com- 
mun; that in launching his little fire-brand he 
burned all vessels that could waft him back to 
the port he had quitted. But I dare say he has 
done well for his own interests ; I doubt if Le 
Sens Commun can much longer hold its ground 
in the midst of the prevalent lunacy.” 

“ What ! it has lost its subscribers ? Gone off 
in sale already, since it declared for peace ?” 

“ Of course it has; and after the article which, 
if I live over to-night, will appear to-morrow, I 
should wonder if it sell enough to cover the cost 
of the print and paper.” 

“Martyr to principle ! I revere, but I do not 
envy thee.” 

“Martyrdom is not my ambition. If Louis 
Napoleon be defeated, what then ? Perhaps he 
may be the martyr; and the Favres and Gam- 
bettas may roast their own eggs on the gridiron 
they heat for his Majesty.” 

Here an English gentleman, who was the very 
able correspondent to a very eminent journal, 
and in that capacity had made acquaintance with 
De Mauleon, joined the two Frenchmen. Sava- 
rin, however, after an exchange of salutations, 
went his way. 

“May I "ask a frank answer to a somewhat 
rude question, M. le Vicomte?” said the En- 
glishman. “Suppose that the Imperial Govern- 
ment had to-day given in their adhesion to the 
peace party, how long would it have been before 
their orators in the Chamber and their organs 
in the jn-ess would have said that ITance was 
governed by poltronsf" 

“ Probably for most of the twenty-four hours. 
But there are a few who are honest in their con- 
victions ; of that few I am one.” 

“ And would have supported the Emperor and 
his government ?” 


17G 


THE PARISIANS. 


“No, monsieur — I do not say that.” 

“Then the Emperor would have turned many 
friends into enemies, and no enemies into friends.” 

“ Monsieur, you in England know that a par- 
ty in opposition is not propitiated when the par- 
ty in power steals its measures. Ha! — pardon 
me — who is that gentleman, evidently your coun- 
tryman, whom I see yonder talking to the sec- ' 
retary of your Embassy ?” 

“He — Mr. Vane — Graham Vane. Do you 
not know him? He has been much in Paris — 
attached to our Embassy formerl}’^ ; a clever man 
— much is expected from him.” 

“ Ah ! I think I have seen him before, but am 
not quite sure. Did you say Vane? I once 
knew a Monsieur Vane, a distinguished Parlia- 
mentary orator.” 

“That gentleman is his son. Would you like 
to be introduced to him?” 

“Not to day; I am in some hurry.” Here 
Victor lifted his hat in parting salutation, and, as 
he walked away, cast at Graham another glance, 
keen and scrutinizing. “I have seen that man 
before,” he muttered. “Where? — when? Can 
it be only a family likeness to the father? No, 
the features are different; the profile is — ha! 
— Mr. Lamb. Mr. Lamb — but why call himself 
by that name ? — why disguised ? — what can he 
have to do with poor Louise? Bah ! — these are 
not questions I can think of now. This war 
— this war. Can it yet be prevented? How it 
will prostrate all the plans my ambition so care- 
fully schemed ! Oh ! — at least, if I were but in 
the Chambre. Perhaps I yet may be before the 
war is ended. The Clavignys have great inter- 
est in their department.” 


CHAPTER V. 

^ Graham had left a note with Rochebriant’s 
concierge requesting an interview on the Mar- 
quis’s return to Paris, and on the evening after 
the day just commemorated he received a line 
saying that Alain had come back, and would be 
at home at nine o’clock, Graham found him- 
self in the Breton’s apartment punctually at the 
hour indicated. 

Alain was in high spirits ; he burst at once 
into enthusiastic exclamations on the virtual an- 
nouncement of war. 

“ Congratulate me, mon cher!" he cried ; “the 
news was a joyous surprise to me. Only so re- 
cently as yesterday morning I was under the 
gloomy apprehension that the Imperial Cabinet 
Avould continue to back Ollivier’s craven declara- 
tion ‘ that France had not been affronted !’ The 
Duchesse de Tarascon, at whose campagne I was 
a guest, is (as you doubtless know) very much 
in the confidence of the Tuileries. On the first 
signs of war I wrote to her, saying, that what- 
ever the objections of my pride to enter tlie army 
as a private in time of peace, such objections 
ceased on the moment when all distinctions of 
France must vanish in the eyes of sons eager to 
defend her banners. The Duchesse in reply 
begged me to come to her campagne, and talk 
over the matter. I went. She then said that 
if war should break out, it was the intention to 
organize the mobiles, and officer them with men 
of birth and education, irrespective of previous 


military service, and in that case I might count 
on my epaulets. But only two nights ago she 
received a letter — I know not, of course, from 
whom — evidently from some high authority — 
that induced her to think the moderation of the 
council would avert the w_,ar, and leave the swords 
of the mobiles in their sheaths. I suspect the 
decision of yesterday must have been a very 
sudden one. Le cher Gramont ! See what it 
is to have a well-born man in a sovereign’s coun- 
cils.” 

“ If war must come, I at least wish all renown 
to yourself. But — ” 

“Oh, spare your ^buts;' England is always 
too full of them where her own interests do not 
appeal to her. She had no ‘ buts’ for war in In- 
dia or a march into Abyssinia.” 

Alain spoke petulantly ; at that moment the 
French were very much irritated by the monitory 
tone of the English journals. Graham prudent- 
ly avoided the chance of rousing the Avrath of 
a young hero yearning for his epaulets. 

“I am English enough,” said he, with good- 
humored courtesy, “to care for English inter- 
ests ; and England has no interest abroad dear- 
er to her than the welfare and dignity of France. 
And now let me tell you why I presumed on an 
acquaintance less intimate than 1 could desire to 
solicit this interview on a matter which concerns 
myself, and in which you could perhaps render 
me a considerable service.” 

“If I can, count it rendered; moA'e to this 
sofa ; join me in a cigar, and let us talk at ease 
comme de vieux amis, whose fathers or brothers 
might have fought side by side in the Crimea.” 
Graham removed to the sofa beside Rochebriant, 
and after one or two whiffs, laid aside the cigar 
and began : 

“ Among the correspondence which monsieur 
your father has left are there any letters of no 
distant date signed Marigny — Madame Mari- 
gny ? Pardon me, I should state my motive in 
putting this question. I am intrusted with a 
charge the fulfillment of Avhich may prove to 
the benefit of this lady or her child ; such fulfill- 
ment is a task imposed upon my honor. But all 
the researches to discover this lady which I ha^ e 
instituted stop at a certain date, Avith this infor- 
mation — viz,, that she corresponded occasional- 
ly Avith the late Marquis de Rochebriant; that 
he habitually preserved the letters of his corre- 
spondents ; and that these letters Avere severally 
transmitted to you at his decease.” 

Alain’s face had taken a very grave expression 
Avhile Graham spoke, and he noAv replied, with a 
mixture of haughtiness and embarrassment : 

“The boxes containing the letters my father 
received and preserved Avere sent to me, as you 
say — the larger portion of them Avere from ladies 
— sorted and labeled, so that in glancing at any 
letter in each packet I could judge of the gener- 
al tenor of those in the same packet Avithout the 
necessity of reading them. All packets of that 
kind. Monsieur Vane, I burned. I do not re- 
member any letters signed ‘Marigny.’” 

“I perfectly understand, my dear Marquis, 
that you Avould destroy all letters Avhich your fa- 
ther himself Avould have destroyed if his last ill- 
ness had been sufficiently prolonged. But I do 
not think the letters I mean Avbuld have come 
under that classification ; probably they were 
short, and on matters of business relating to 


THE PARISIANS. 


some third person— some person, for instance, 
of the name of Louise, or of Duval !” 

“ Stop ! let me think. I have a vague remem- 
brance of one or two letters which rather per- 
plexed me ; they were labeled, ‘ Louise D . 

Mem. : to make further inquiries as to the fate 
of her uncle. ’ ” 

‘ ‘ Marquis, these are the letters I seek. Thank 
Heaven, you have not destroyed them!” 

“No ; there was no reason why I should de- 
stroy, though I really can not state precisely any 
reason why I kept them. I have a very vague 
recollection of their existence.” 

“I entreat you to allow me at least to glance 
at the handwriting, and compare it with that of 
a letter I have about me ; and if the several 
handwritings correspond, I would ask you to let 
me have the address, which, according to your 
father’s memorandum, will be found in the letters 
you have preserved.” 

“ To compliance with such a request I not 
only can not demur, but perhaps it may free me 
from some responsibility which I might have 
thought the letters devolved upon my executor- 
ship. I am sure they did not concern the honor 
of any woman of any family, for in that case I 
must have burned them.” 

“ Ah, Marquis, shake hands there! In such 
concord between man and man there is more 
entente cordiale between England and Prance 
than there was at Sebastopol. Now let me com- 
pare the handwritings.” 

“The box that contained the letters is not 
liere ; I left it at Rochebriant ; I will telegraph 
to my aunt to send it ; the day after to-morrow 
it will no doubt arrive. Breakfast with me that 
day — say at one o’clock — and after breakfast the 
bo‘x!” 

“ How can I thank you?” 

“Thank me! but you said your honor was 
concerned in your request — requests affecting 
honor between men comme il faut is a ceremony, 
of course, like a bow between them. One bows, 
the other returns the bow — no thanks on either 
side. Now that we have done with that matter, 
let me say that I thought your wish for our in- 
terview originated in a very different cause.” 

“What could that be ?” 

“Nay, do you not recollect that last talk be- 
tween us, when with such loyalty y'ou spoke to 
me about Mademoiselle Cicogna, and. supposing 
that there might be rivalship between us, re- 
tracted all that you might have before said to 
warn me against fostering the sentiment with 
which she had inspired me, even at the first 
slight glance of a face which can not be lightly 
forgotten by those who have once seen it ?” 

“ I recollect perfectly every word of that talk. 
Marquis,” answered Graham, calmly, but with 
his hand concealed within his vest and pressed 
tightly to his heart. The warning of Mrs. Mor- 
ley flashed upon him. “Was this the man to 
seize the prize he had put aside — this man, youn- 
ger than himself — handsomer than himself — 
higher in rank ?” “I recollect that talk. Mar- 
quis ! Well, what then ?” ' 

“ In my self-conceit, I supposed that you might 
have heard how much I admired Mademoiselle 
Cicogna — how, having not long since met her at 
the house of Duplessis (who, by-the-way, writes 
me word that I shall meet you chez Jui to-mor- 
row), I have since sought her society wherever 

N 


177 

there was a chance to find it. You may have 
heard, at our club or elsewhere, how I adore 
her genius — how, I say, that nothing so Breton 
— that is, so pure and so lofty — has appeared 
and won readers since the days of Chateaubri- 
and — and you, knowing that les absens ont tou- 
jo 2 irs tort, come to me and ask Monsieur de 
Rochebriant, Are we rivals ? I expected a chal- 
lenge. You relieve my mind. You abandon the 
field to me?” 

At the first I warned the reader how improved 
from his old mauvaise lionte a year or so of Paris 
lite would make our beau Marquis. How a year 
or two of London life, with its horsey slang and 
its fast girls of tlie period, would have vulgarized 
an English Rochebriant! 

Graham gnawed his lips and replied, quietly, 
“I do not challenge! Am I to congratulate 
you?” 

“No; that brilliant victory is not for me. I^ 
thought that was made clear in the conversation 
I have referred to. But if you have. done me the 
honor to be jealous, I am exceedingly flattered. 
Speaking seriously, if I admired Mademoiselle 
Cicogna when you and 1 last met, the admira- 
tion is increased by the respect with which I re- 
gard a character so simply noble. How many 
women older than she would have been spoiled 
by the adulation that has followed her literary 
success? — how few women so young, placed in 
a position so critical, having the courage to lead 
a life so independent, would have maintained the 
dignity of their character free from a single in- 
discretion? I speak not from my own knowl- 
edge, but from the report of all who would be 
pleased enough to censure if they could find a 
cause. Good society is the paradise of mau- 
vaises langues." 

Graham caught Alain’s hand and pressed it, 
but made no answer. 

The young Marquis continued: 

“You will pardon me for speaking thus free- 
ly in the way that I would wish any friend to 
speak of the demoiselle who might become my 
wife. I owe you mudh, not only for the loyalty 
with which you addressed me in reference to this 
young lady, but for words affecting my own po- 
sition in France, which sunk deep into my mind 
— saved me from deeming myself a poscrit in my 
own land — filled me with a manly ambition, not 
stifled amidst the thick of many effeminate follies 
— and, in fact, led me to the cai-eer which is about 
to open before me, and in which my ancestors 
have left me no undistinguished examples. ’ Let 
us speak, then, a cceur ouvert, as one friend to 
another. Has there been any misunderstanding 
between you and Mademoiselle Cicogna which 
has delayed your return to Paris? If so, is it 
over now ?” 

“There has been no such misunderstanding.” 

“Do you doubt whether the sentiments you 
expressed in regard to her, when we met last year, 
are returned ?” 

“I have no right to conjecture her sentiments. 
You mistake altogether.” 

“ I do not believe that I am dunce enough 
to mistake your feelings toward mademoiselle — 
they may be read in your face at this moment. 
Of course I do not presume to hazard a conjecture 
as to those of mademoiselle toward yourself. But 
wlien I met her not long since at the house of 
Duplessis, with whose daughter she is intimate. 


178 


THE PiVKISIANS. 


I chanced to speak to her of you ; and if I may 
judge by looks and manner, I chose no displeas- 
ing theme. You turn away. I offend you?” 

“Offend — no, indeed; but on this subject I 
am not prepared to converse. 1 came to Fajis 
on matters of business much complicated, and 
which ought to absorb my attention. I can not 
longer trespass on your evening. The day aft- 
er to-morrow, then, I will be with you at one 
o’clock.” 

“Yes; I hope then to have the letters you 
wish to consult ; and, meanwhile, we meet to- 
morrow at the Hotel Duplessis.” 


CHAPTER VI. 

Graham had scarcely quitted Alain, and the 
young Marquis was about to saunter forth to his 
club, when Duplessis was announced. 

These two men had naturally seen much of 
each other since Duplessis had returned from 
Bretagne and delivered Alain from the gripe of 
Louvier. Scarcely a day had passed but what 
Alain had been summoned to enter into the 
financier’s plans for the aggrandizement of the 
Rochebriant estates, and deliberately made to feel 
that he had become a partner in speculations 
which, thanks to the capital and the abilities Du- 
plessis brought to bear, seemed likely to result in 
the ultimate freedom of his property from all 
burdens, and the restoration of his inheritance to 
a splendor correspondent with the dignity of his 
rank. 

On the plea that his mornings were chiefly de- 
voted to professional business, Duplessis arranged 
that these consultations should take place in the 
evenings. From those consultations Valerie was 
not banished ; Duplessis took her into the coun- 
cil as a matter of course. “ Valerie,” said the 
financier to Alain, “though so young, has a very 
clear head for business, and she is so interested 
in all that interests myself that even where I do 
not take her opinion, I at 14ast feel my own made 
livelier and brighter by her sympathy.” 

So the girl was in the habit of taking her work 
or her book into the cabinet de travail, and nev- 
er obtruding a suggestion unasked, still, when 
appealed to, speaking with a modest good sense 
which justified her father’s confidence and praise; 
and apropos of her book, she iiad taken Chateau- 
briand into peculiar favor. Alain had respect- 
fully presented to her beautifully bound copies 
of Atala and Le G€nie du Christianisnie. It is 
astonishing, indeed, how he had already con- 
trived to regulate her tastes in literature. The 
charms of those quiet family evenings had stolen 
into the young Breton’s heart. 

He yearned for none of the giiyer reunions in 
which he had before sought for a pleasure that 
his nature had not found, for amidst the amuse- 
ments of Paris Alain remained intensely Bret- 
on — viz., formed eminently for the simple joys 
of domestic life, associating the sacred hearth- 
stone with the antique religion of his fathers, 
gathering round it all the images of pure and 
noble affections which the romance of a poetic 
temperament had evoked from the solitude which 
had surrounded a melancholy boyhood — an un- 
contaminated youth. 

Duplessis entered abruptly, and 'ivith a coun- 


tenance much disturbed from its wonted satur- 
nine composure. 

“ Marquis, what is this I have just heard from 
the Duchesse de Tarascon ? Can it be? You 
ask military service in this ill-omened war? — 
you ?” 

“My dear and best friend,” said Alain, very 
much startled, “ I should have thought that you, 
of all men in the world, would have most ap- 
! proved of my request — you, so devoted an Im- 
! perialist — you, indignant that the representative 
of one of those families which the first Na})oleon 
so eagerly and so vainly courted should ask for 
the grade of sous-lieutenant in the armies of Na- 
poleon the Third — you, who of all men know 
how ruined are the fortunes of a Rochebriant — 
you feel surprised that he clings to the noblest 
heritage his ancestors have left to him — their 
sword ! I do not understand you.” 

“Marquis,” said Duplessis, seating himself, 
and regarding Alain with a look in which were 
blended the sort of admiration and the sort of 
contempt with which a practical man of the 
world, who, having himself gone through certain 
credulous follies, has learned to despise the fol- 
lies, but retains a reminiscence of sympathy with 
the fools they bewitch — “Marquis, pardon me; 
you talk finely, but you do not talk common- 
sense. I should be extremely pleased if your 
Legitimist scruples had allowed you to solicit, or 
rather to accept, a civil appointment not unsuit- 
ed to your rank, under the ablest sovereign, as 
a civilian, to whom France can look for ration- 
al liberty combined with established order. Such 
openings to a suitable career you have rejected ; 
but who on earth could expect you, never trained 
to military service, to draw a -sword hitherto sa- 
cred to the Bourbons on behalf of a cause which 
the madness, I do not say of France, but of Par- 
is, has enforced on a sovereign against whom 
you would fight to-morrow if you had a chance 
of placing the descendant of Henry IV. on his 
throne ?” 

“I am not about to fight for any sovereign, 
but for my country against the fqj'eigner.” 

“ An excellent answer if the foreigner had in- 
vaded your country ; but it seems that your coun- 
try is going to invade the foreigner — a very diL 
fefent thing. Chut! all this is discussion most 
painful to me. I feel for the Emperor a person- 
al loyalty,, and for the hazards he is about to en- 
counter a prophetic dread, as an ancestor of 
yours might have felt for Francis I. could he 
have foreseen Pavia. Let us talk of ourselves 
and the effect the war should have upon our in- 
dividual action. You are aware, of course, that 
though M. Louvier has had notice of our inten- 
tion to pay off his mortgage, that intention can 
not be carried into effect for six months ; if the 
money be not then forth-coming, his hold on 
Rochebriant remains unshaken. The sum is 
large. ” 

“Alas! yes.” 

“The war must greatly disturb the money- 
market, affect many speculative adventures and 
operations when at the very moment credit may 
be most needed. It is absolutely necessary that 
I should be daily at my post on the Bourse, and 
hourly watch the ebb and flow of events. Under 
these circumstances, I had counted — permit me 
to count still — on your presence in Bretagne. 
We have already begun negotiations on a some- 



60 THE GITITj AVAS IN THE UAUIT OF TAKING HEU WORK O^ HER BOOK INTO THE OAIUNEX 

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THE PAKISIANS. 


179 


what extensive scale, whether as regards the im- 
provement o! forests and orchards, or the plans 
for building allotments, as soon as the lands are 
free for disposal. For all these the eye of a mas- 
ter is required. I entreat yon, then, to take up 
your residence at Rochebriant.” 

“My dear friend, this is but a kindly and deli- 
cate mode of relieving me from the dangers of 
war. I have, as you must be conscious, no prac- 
tical knowledge of business. He'bert can be im- 
plicitly trusted, and will carry out your views 
with a zeal equal, to mine, and with infinitely 
more ability.” 

“ Marquis, pray neither to Hercules nor to He- 
bert ; if you wish to get your own cart out of the 
ruts, put your own shoulder to the wheel.” 

Alain colored high, unaccustomed to be so 
bluntly addressed, but he replied, with a kind of 
dignified meekness : 

“I shall ever remain grateful for what you 
have done, and wish to do, for me. But, assum- 
ing that you suppose rightly, the estates of Roche- 
briant would, in your hands, become a profitable 
investment, and more than redeem the mortgage, 
and the sum you have paid Louvier on my ac- 
count, let it pass to you irrespectively of me. I 
shall console myself in the knowledge that the 
old place will be restored, and those who honored 
its old owners prosper in hands so strong, guided 
by a heart so generous.” 

Duplessis was deeply affected by these simple 
words ; they seized him on the tenderest side of 
his character — for his heart was generous, and 
no one except his lost wife and his loving child 
had ever before discovered it to be so. Has it 
ever happened to you, reader, to be appreciated 
on the one point of the good or great that is in 
you — on which secretly you value yourself most 
— but for which nobody, not admitted into your 
heart of hearts, has given you credit? If that 
had happened to you, judge what Duplessis felt 
when tiie fittest representative of that divine chiv- 
alry which, if sometimes deficient in head, owes 
all that exalts it to riches of heart, spoke thus to 
the professional money-maker, whose qualities of 
head were so acknowledged that a compliment 
to them wonld be a hollow impertinence, and 
whose qualities of heart had never yet received a 
compliment! 

Duplessis started from his seat and embraced 
Alain, murmuring, “Listen to me. I love you 
— I never had a son — be mine — Rochebriant shall 
be my daughter’s dot." 

Alain returned the embrace, and then recoil- 
ing. said : 

“Father, your first desire must be honor for 
vour son. You have guessed my secret — I have 
learned to love Valerie. Seeing her out in the 
world, she seemed like other girls, fair and com- 
monplace ; seeing her at your house, I have said 
to myself, ‘ There is the one girl fairer than all 
others in my eyes, and the one individual to 
whom all other girls are commonplace.’” 

“ Is that true ? — is it ?” 

“ True ! — does a gentilhomrne ever lie ? And 
out of that love for her has grown this immova- 
ble desire to be something worthy of her — some- 
thing that may lift me from the vulgar platform 
of men who owe all to ancestors, nothing to them- 
selves. Do you suppose for one moment that I, 
saved from ruin and penury by Valerie’s father, 
could be base enough to say to her, * In return 


be Madame la Marquise de Rochebriant ?’ Do 
you suppose that I, whom yoy would love and 
respect as son, could come to you and say, ‘ I 
am oppressed by your favors, I am crippled wdth 
debts — give me your millions and we are quits ?’ 
No, Duplessis ! You, so well descended your- 
self — so superior as man among men that you 
would have won name and position had you been 
born the son of a shoe-black — you would eternal- 
ly despise the noble who, in days when all that 
we Bretons deem holy in noblesse are subject- 
ed to ridicule and contempt, should vilely forget 
the only motto which the scutcheons of all gentil- 
hommes have in common, '‘Noblesse oblige.'' War, 
with all its perils and all its grandeur — war lifts 
on high the banners of France — war, in which 
every ancestor of mine whom I care to recall ag- 
grandized the name that descends to me. Let 
me, then, do as those before me have done ; let 
me prove that I am worth something in myself, 
and then you and I are equals ; and I can say 
with no humbled crest, ‘Your benefits are ac- 
cepted.’ The man who has fought not ignobly 
for France may aspire to the hand of her daugli- 
ter. Give me Valerie; as to her dot^ be it so, 
Rochebriant — it will pass to her children.” 

“Alain ! Alain ! my friend ! my son I — but if 
you fall ! ” 

“ Vale'rie will give you a nobler son.” 

Duplessis moved away, sighing heavily ; but he 
said no more in deprecation of Alain's martial 
resolves. 

A Frenchman, however practical, however 
worldly, however philosophical he may be, who 
does not sympathize with the follies of honor — 
who does not concede indulgence to the hot blood 
of youth when he says, “My country is insulted 
and her banner is unfurled,” may certainly be a 
man of excellent common-sense ; but if such men 
had been in the majority, Gaul would never hav'e 
been France — Gaul would have been a province 
of Germany. 

And as Duplessis walked horaew’ard, he, the 
calmest and most far-seeing of all authorities on 
the Bourse, the man who, excepting only De 
Mauleon, most decidedly deemed the cause of 
the war a blunder, and most forebodingly antici- 
pated its issues, caught the prevalent enthusi- 
asm. Every wheie he was stopped by cordial 
hands, everywhere met by congratulating smiles. 
“ How right you have been, Duplessis, when you 
have laughed at those who have said, ‘ The Em- 
peror is ill, decrepit, done up !’ ” 

“ Viire r Empereur ! at last we shall be face to 
face with those insojent Prussians!” 

Before he arrived at his home, passing along 
the Boulevards, greeted by all the groups en- 
joying the cool night air before the cafe's, Du- 
plessis had caught the w^ar epidemic. 

Entering his hotel, he went at once to Valerie’s 
chamber. “Sleep well to-night, child: Alain 
has told me that he adores thee, and if he will 
go to the war, it is that he may lay his laurels at 
thy feet. Bless thee, my child! thou couldst 
not have made a nobler choice.” 

Whether after these words Valerie slept well 
or not ’tis not for me to say, but if she did sleep, 
I venture to guess that her dreams were rose- 
colored. 


180 


THE TARISIANS. 


CHAPTER VII. 

All the earlier part of that next day Graham 
Vane remained in-doors — a lovely day at Paris, 
that 8th of July, and with that summer day 
all hearts which at Paris were in unison. Dis- 
content was charmed into enthusiasm — Belle- 
ville and Montmartre forgot the visions of Com- 
munism and Socialism, and other isms not to be 
realized except in some undiscovered Atlantis ! 

The Emperor was the idol of the day — the 
names of Jules Favre and Gambetta were by- 
words of scorn. Even Armand Monnier, still out 
of work, beginning to feel the pinch of want, and 
fierce for any revolution that might turn topsy- 
turvy the conditions of labor — even Annand Mon- 
nier was found among groups that were laying 
itnmortelles at the foot of the column in the Place 
Vendome, and heard to say to a fellow-malcon- 
tent, with eyes uplifted to the statue of the first 
Napoleon, “Do you not feel at this moment that 
no Frenchman can be long angry with the little 
cor])oral ? He denied La Liberte^ but he gave 
La Gloire." 

Heeding not the stir of the world without, 
Graham was compelling into one resolve the 
doubts and scruples which had so long warred 
against the heart which they ravaged, but could 
not wholly subdue. 

The conversations with jVIrs. Morley and 
Rochebriant had placed in a light in which he 
had not before regarded it the image of Isaura. 
He had reasoned from the starting-point of his 
love for her, and had sought to convince himself 
that against that love it was his duty to strive. 

But now a new question was addressed to his 
conscience as well as to his heart. What though 
he had never formally declared to her his affec- 
tion — never, in open words, wooed her as his 
own — never even hinted to her the hopes of a 
union which at one time he had fondly enter- 
tained — still it was true that his love had been 
too transparent not to be detected by her, and 
not to have led her on to return it ? 

Certainly he had, as we know, divined that he 
was not indifferent to her ; at Enghien, a year 
ago, that he had gained her esteem, and perhaps 
interested her fancy. 

We know also how he had tried to persuade 
himself that the artistic temperament, especially 
when developed in women, is too elastic to sutler 
the things of real life to have lasting influence 
over hapj)iness or sorrow ; that in the pursuits 
in which her thought and imagination found em- 
ploy, in the excitement they sustained, and the 
fame to which they conduced, Isaura would be 
readily consoled for a momentary pang of disap- 
pointed affection; and that a man so alien as 
himself, both by nature and by habit, from the 
artistic world was the very last person who 
could maintain deep and permanent impression 
on her actual life or her ideal dreams. But what 
if. as he gathered from the words of the fair 
American — what if, in all these assumptions, he 


was wholly mistaken ? What if, in previously 
revealing his own heart, he had decoyed hers — 
what if, by a desertion she had no right to antic- 
ipate, he had blighted her future? What if this 
brilliant child of genius could love as warmly, as 
deeply, as enduringly as any simple village girl 
to whom there is no poetry except love ? If this 
were so, what became the first claim on his hon- 
or, his conscience, his duty ? 

The force which but a few days ago his reason- 
ings had given to the arguments that forbade 
him to think of Isaura became weaker and 
weaker as now in an altered ’mood of reflection 
he resummoned and reweighed them. 

All those prejudices — which had seemed to him 
such rational common-sense truths when trans- 
lated from his own mind into the words of Lady 
Janet’s letter — was not Mrs. Morley right in de- 
nouncing them as the crotchets of an insolent 
egotism ? Was it not rather to the favor than to 
the disparagement of Isaura, regarded even in 
the man’s narrow-minded view of woman’s dig- 
nity, that this orphan girl could, with character 
so unscathed, pass through the trying ordeal of 
the public babble, the public gaze — command 
alike the esteem of a woman so pure as Mrs. 
Morley, the reverence of a man so chivalrously 
sensitive to honor as Alain de Rochebriant ? 

Musing thus, Graham’s countenance at last 
brightened — a glorious joy entered into and pos- 
sessed him. He felt as a man Avho had burst 
asunder the swathes and trammels which had 
kept him galled and miserable with the sense of 
captivity, and from which some wizard spell that 
took strength from his own superstition had for- 
bidden to struggle. 

He was free I — and that freedom was rapture ! 
Yes, his resolve was taken. • 

The day was now far advanced. He should 
have just time before the dinner with Duplessis 

to drive to A , where he still supposed Isaura 

resided. How, as his Jiacre rolled along the 
well-remembered road — how completely he lived 
in that world of romance of which he denied 
himself to be a denizen ! 

Arrived at the little villa, he found it occupied 
only by workmen — it was under repair. No one 
could tell him to what residence the ladies who 
occ upied it the last year had removed. 

“I shall learn from Mrs. Morley,” thought 
Graham, and at her house he called in going 
back ; but Mrs. Morley was not at home. He had 
only just, time, after regaining his apartment, to 
change his dress for the dinner to Avhich he was 
invited. As it was, he arrived late, and while 
apologizing to his host for his want of punctual- 
ity, his tongue faltered. At the farther end of 
the room he saw a face, paler and thinner than 
when he had seen it last — a face across which a 
something of grief had gone. 

The servant announced that “ dinner was 
served.” 

“ Mr. Vane,” said Duplessis, “will you take 
in to dinner Mademoiselle Cicogna ?” 


THE PARISIANS. 


181 


BOOK ELEVENTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

Among the frets and checks to the course that 
“ never did run smooth” there is one which is 
sufficiently frequent, for many a reader will re- 
member the irritation it caused him. You have 
counted on a meeting with the beloved one un- 
witnessed by others, an interchange of confes- 
sions and vows Avhich others may not hear. You 
have arranged almost the words in which your 
innermost heart is to be expressed ; pictured to 
yourself the very looks by which those words 
will have their sweetest reply. The scene you 
have thus imagined appears to you vivid and 
distinct, as if foreshown in a magic glass. And 
suddenly, after long absence, xhe meeting takes 
place in the midst of a common companionship: 
nothing that you wished to say can be said. 
The scene you pictured is painted out by the 
irony of Chance, and groups and backgrounds 
of which you had never dreamed start forth 
from the disappointing canvas. Happy if that 
be all! But sometimes, by a strange subtle 
intuition, you feel that the person herself is 
changed ; and sympathetic with that change, a 
terrible chill comes over your own heart. 

Before Graham had taken his seat at the ta- 
ble beside Isaura he felt that she was changed 
to him. He felt it by her very touch as their 
hands met at the first greeting — by the tone of 
her voice in the few words that passed between 
them — by the absence of all glow in the smile 
which had once lit up her face, as a burst of 
sunshine lights up a day in spring, and gives a 
richer gladness of color to all its blooms. Once 
seated side by side, they remained for some mo- 
ments silent. Indeed, it \vould have been rather 
difficult for any thing less than the wonderful 
intelligence of lovers between whom no wall can 
prevent the stolen interchange of tokens, to have 
ventured private talk of their own amidst the 
excited converse which seemed all eyes, all 
tongues, all ears, admitting no one present to 
abstract himself from the common emotion. En- 
glishmen do not recognize the old classic law 
which limited the number of guests where ban- 
quets are meant to be pleasant to that of the 
Nine Muses. They invite guests so numerous, 
and so shy of launching talk across the table, 
that you may talk to the person next to you not 
less secure from listeners than you would be in 
talking with the stranger whom you met at a 
well in the Sahara. It is not so, except on state 
occasions, at Paris. Difficult there to retire into 
solitude with your next neighbor. The guests 
collected by Duplessis completed with himself 
the number of the Sacred Nine — the host, Va- 
lerie, Rochebriant, Graham, Isaura, Signora Ve- 
nosta. La Duchesse de Tarascon, the wealthy 

and high-born Imperialist, Prince , and, last 

and least, one who shall be nameless. 

I have read somewhere, perhaps in one of the 
books which American superstition dedicates to 
the mysteries of Spiritualism, how a gifted seer, 
technically styled medium, sees at the opera a 
box which to other eyes appears untenanted and 
empty, but to him is full of ghosts, well dressed 
in costume ,de regle^ gazing on the boards and 


listening to the music. Like such ghosts are 
certain beings whom I call Lookers-on. Though 
still living, they have no share in the life they 
survey. They come as from another w’orld to 
hear and to see what is passing in ours. In 
ours they lived once, but that troubled, sort of 
life they have survived. Still, we amuse them 
as stage-players and puppets amuse ourselves. 
One of these Lookers-on completed the party at 
the house of Duplessis. 

How lively, how animated the talk w'as at the 
financier’s pleasant table that day, the 8th of 
J uly ! The excitement of the coming war made 
itself loud in every Gallic voice, and kindled 
in every Gallic eye. Appeals at every second 
minute were made, sometimes courteous, some- 
times sarcastic, to the Englishman — promising 
son of an eminent statesman, and native of a 
country in which France is always coveting an 
ally, and always suspecting an enemy. Certain- 
ly Graham could not have found a less propi- 
tious moment for asking Isaura if she really 
were changed. And certainly the honor of 
Great Britain was never less ably represented 
(that is saying a great deal) than it was on this 
occasion by the young man reared to diplomacy 
and aspiring to Parliamentary distinction. He 
answered all questions with a constrained voice 
and an insipid smile — all questions pointedly ad- 
dressed to him as to what demonstrations of ad- 
miring sympathy with the gallantry of France 
might be expected from the English govern- 
ment and people; what his acquaintance with 
the German races led him to suppose would be 
the effect on the southern states of the first de- 
feat of the Prussians ; whether the man called 
Moltke was not a mere strategist on paper, a 
crotchety pedant ; whether, if Belgium became 
so enamored of the glories of France as to so- 
licit fusion with her people, England would have 
a right to offer any objection, etc., etc. I do 
not think that during that festival Graham once 
thought one-millionth so much about the fates 
of Prussia and France as he did think, “ Why is 
that girl so changed to me? Merciful Heaven! 
is she lost to my life ?” 

By training, by habit, even by passion, the 
man was a genuine politician, cosmopolitan as 
well as patriotic, accustomed to consider what 
effect every vibration in that balance of Euro- 
pean power, which no deep thinker can despise, 
must have on the destinies of civilized humanity, 
and on those of the nation to which he belongs. 
But are there not moments in life when the hu- 
man heart suddenly narrows the circumference 
to which its emotions are extended? As the 
ebb of a tide, it retreats from the shores it had 
covered on its flow, drawing on with contracted 
waves the treasure-trove it has selected to hoard 
amidst its deeps. 


CHAPTER 11. 

On quitting the dining-room the Duchesse de 
Tarascon said to her host, on whose arm she was 
leaning, “ Of course you and I must go with the 


182 


THE PARISIANS. 


stream. But is not all the fine talk that has 
passed to-day at your table, and in which we too 
have joined, a sort of hypocrisy ? I may say 
this to you ; I would say it to no other.” 

“And I say to you, Madame la Duchesse, 
that which I would say to no other. Thinking 
over it as I sit alone, I find myself making a 
‘ terrible hazard but when I go abroad and be- 
come infected by the general enthusiasm, I pluck 
up gayety of spirit, and whisper to myself, ‘ True,, 
but it may be an enormous gain.’ To get the 
left bank of the Rhine is a trifle ; but to check 
in our next neighbor a growth which a few years 
hence would overtop us — that is no ti ifle. And 
be the gain worth the hazard or not, could the 
Emperor, could any government likely to hold 
its own for a week, have declined to take the 
chance of the die ?” 

The Duchesse mused a moment, and mean- 
while the two seated themselves on a divan in 
the corner of the salon. Then she said, very 
slowly : 

“No government that held its tenure on pop- 
ular suffrage could have done so. But if the 
Emperor had retained the personal authority 
which once allowed the intellect of one man to 
control and direct the passions of many, I think 
the war would have been averted. I have rea- 
son to know that the Emperor gave his em- 
])hatic support to the least bellicose members 
of the council, and that Gramont’s speech did 
not contain the passage that precipitates hostili- 
ties when the council in which it was framed 
broke up. These fatal words were forced upon 
him by the temper in which the ministers found 
the Chamber, and the reports of the popular ex- 
citement which could not be resisted without 
imminent danger of revolution. It is Paris 
that has forced the war on the Emperor. But 
enough of this subject. What must be must; 
and, as you say, the gain may be greater than 
the hazard. I come to something else you whis- 
pered to me before we went in to dinner — a sort 
of complaint which wounds me sensibly. You 
say I have assisted to a choice of danger, and 
possibly of death, a very distant connection of 
mine, who might have been a very near connec- 
tion of yours. You mean Alain de Rochebri- 
ant?” 

“Yes; I accept him as a suitor for the hand 
of my only daughter.” 

“ I am so glad, not for your sake so much as 
for his. No one can know him well without ap- 
preciating in him the finest qualities of the finest 
order of the French noble ; but having known 
your pretty Valerie so long, my congratulations 
are for the man who can win her. Meanwhile 
hear my explanation : when I promised Alain 
any interest I can command for the grade of of- 
ficer in a regiment of Mobiles, I knew not that 
he had formed, or was likely to form, ties or 
duties to keep him at home. I withdraw my 
promise.” 

“No, Duchesse, fulfill it. I should be disloy- 
al indeed if I robbed a sovereign under whose 
tranquil and prosperous reign 1 have acquired, 
with no dishonor, the fortune which Order prof- 
fers to Commerce, of one gallant defender in the 
hour of need. And, speaking frankly, if Alain 
were really my son, I think I am Frenchman 
enough to remember that France is my mother.” 

“Say no more, my friend — say no more,” 


cried the Duchesse, with the warm blood of the 
heart rushing through all the delicate coatings 
of pearl powder. “If every Frenchman felt as 
you do ; if in this Paris of ours all hostilities 
of class may merge in the one thought of the 
common country ; if in French hearts there yet 
thrill the same sentiment as that which, in the 
terrible days when all other ties were rent asun- 
der, revered France as mother, and rallied her 
sons to her aid against the confederacy of Eu- 
rope — why, then, we need not grow pale with 
dismay at the sight of a Prussian needle-gun. 
Hist! look yonder. Is not that a tableau of 
Youth in Arcady? Worlds rage around, and 
Love, unconcerned, whispers to Love!” The 
Duchesse here pointed to a corner of the adjoin- 
ing room in which Alain and Valerie sat apart, 
he w'hispering into her ear, her cheek downcast, 
and, even seen at that distance, brightened by 
the delicate tendei’tiess of its blushes. 


CHAPTER III. 

But in that small assembly there were two who 
did not attract the notice of Duplessis, or of the 
Lady of the Imperial Court. While the Piince 

and the placid Looker-on were engaged at a 

contest of ecarte, with the lively Venosta, for the' 
gallery, interposing criticisms and admonitions, 
Isaura was listlessly turning over a collection of 
photographs strewed on a table that stood near 
to an open window in the remoter angle of the 
room, communicating with a long and wide bal- 
cony filled partially with flowers, and overlook- 
ing the Champs Elysees, softly lit up by the in- 
numerable summer stars. Suddenly a whisper, 
the command of which she could not resist, 
thrilled through her ear, and sent the blood rush- 
ing back to her heart. 

“ Do you remember that evening at Enghien ? 
how I said that our imagination could not carry 
us beyond the question whether we two should be 
gazing together that night twelvemonths on that 
star which each of us had singled out from the 
hosts of heaven ? That was the 8th of July. It 
is the 8th of J uly once more. Come and seek for 
our chosen star. Come. I have something to 
say which say I must. Come.” 

Mechanically, as it were — mechanically, as 
they tell us the Somnambulist obeys the Mes- 
merizer — Isaura obeyed that summons. In a 
kind of dreamy submission she followed his steps, 
and found herself on the balcony, flowers around 
her and stars above, by the side of the man who 
had been to her that being ever surrounded by 
flowers and lighted by stars — the ideal of Ro- 
mance to the heart of virgin Woman. 

“ Isaura,” said the Englishman, softly. At the 
sound of her own name for the first time heard 
from those lips every nerve in her frame quiv- 
ered. “Isaura, I have tried to live without you. 
I can not. You are all in all to me. Without 
you it seems to me as if earth had no flowers, 
and even heaven had withdrawn its stars. Are 
there differences between us ; differences of taste, 
of sentiments, of habits, of thought? Only let 
me hope that you can love me a tenth part so 
much as I love you, and such differences cease 
to be discord. Love harmonizes all sounds, blends 
all colors into its own divine oneness of heart -and 


THE PAKISIANS. 


183 


soul. Look up ! Is not the star which this time 
last year invited our gaze above, is it not still 
there ? Does it not still invite our ga^e ? Isau- 
ra, speak!” 

“ Hush, hush, hush !” The girl could say no 
more, but she recoiled from his side. 

The recoil did not wound him. There was no 
hate in it. He advanced ; he caught her hand, 
and continued, in one of those voices which be- 
came so musical in summer nights under starry 
skies : 

“ Isaura, there is one name w^hich I can never 
utter without a reverence due to the religion which 
binds earth to heaven — a name which to man 
should be the symbol of life cheered and beauti- 
fied, exalted, hallowed. That name is ‘ wife. ’ 
Will you take that name from me ?” 

And still Isaura made no reply. She stood 
mute and cold and rigid as a statue of marble. 
At length, as if consciousness had been arrested 
and was struggling back, she sighed heavily, and 
pressed her hands slowly over her forehead. 

“Mockery, mockery!” she said then, with a 
smile half bitter, half plaintive, on her colorless 
lips. “Did you wait to ask me that question 
till you knew what my answer must be ? 1 have 
pledged the name of wife to another.” 

“ No, no ; you say that to rebuke, to punish 
me. Unsay it! unsay it!” 

Isaura beheld the anguish of his face with be- 
wildered ej^es. “ How can my words pain you ?” 
she said, drearily. “Did you not write that 1 
had unfitted myself to be wife to you ?” 

“I?” 

“ That I had left behind me the peaceful im- 
munities of private life ? I felt you were so right ! 
Yes ! I am affianced to one who thinks that in 
spite of that misfortune — ” 

“Stop, I command you — stop ! You saw my 
letter to Mrs. Morley. I have not had one mo- 
ment free from torture and remorse since I wrote 
it. But whatever in that letter you might justly 
resent — ” 

“ I did not resent — ” 

Graham heard not the interruption, but hur- 
ried on. “ You would forgive could you read 
my heart. No matter. Every sentiment in 
that letter, except those which conveyed admi- 
ration, I retract. Be mine, and instead of pre- 
suming to check in you the irresistible impulse 
of genius to the first place in the head or the 
heart of the world, I will teach myself to encour- 
age, to share, to exult in it. Do you know what 
a ditference there is between the absent one and 
the present one — between the distant image 
against whom our doubts, our fears, our sus- 
picions raise up hosts of imaginary giants, bar- 
riers of visionary walls, and the beloved face be- 
fore the sight of which the hosts are fled, the 
walls are vanished ? Isaura, we meet again. 
You know now from ray own lips that I love you. 
I think your lips will not deny that you love me. 
You say that you are affianced to another. Tell 
the man frankly, honestly, that you mistook your 
heart. It is not yours to give. Save yourself, 
save him, from a union in which there can be no 
happiness.” 

“It is too late,” said Isaura, with hollow 
tones, but with no trace of vacillating weakness 
on her brow and lips. “ Did I say now to that 
other one, ‘ I break the faith that I pledged to 
you,’ I should kill him, body and soul. Slight 


thing though I be, to him I am all in all ; to you, 
Mr. Vane, to you a memory — the memory of one 
whom a year, perhaps a month hence, you will 
rejoice to think you have escaped.” 

She passed from him — passed away from the 
flowers and the starlight ; and when Graham — 
recovering from the stun of her crushing words, 
and with the haughty mien and step of the man 
who goes forth from the ruin of his hopes, lean-, 
ing for support upon his pride — when Graham 
re-entered the room all the guests had departed 
save only Alain, who was still exchanging whis- 
pered words with Valerie. 


CHAPTER IV. 

The next day, at the hour appointed, Graham 
entered Alain’s apartment. “I am glad to tell 
you,” said the Marquis, gayly, “that the box 
has arrived, and we will very soon examine its 
contents. Breakfast claims precedence.” Dur- 
ing the meal Alain was in gay spirits, and did 
not at first notice the gloomy countenance and 
abstracted mood of his guest. At length, sur- 
prised at. the dull response to his lively sallies on 
the part of a man generally so pleasant in the 
frankness of his speech, and the cordial ring of 
his sympathetic laugh, it occurred to him that 
the change in Graham must be ascribed to some- 
thing that had gone wrong in the meeting with 
Isaura the evening before ; and remembering the 
curtness with which Graham had implied disin- 
clination to converse about the fair Italian, he 
felt perplexed how to reconcile the impulse of his 
good nature with the discretion imposed on his 
good-breeding. At all events, a compliment to 
the lady whom Graham had so admired could do 
no harm. 

“ How well Mademoiselle Cicogna looked last 
night !” 

“Did she? It seemed to me that in health 
at least she did not look very well. Have you 
heard what day M. Thiers will speak on the 
war ?” 

“Thiers? No. Who cares about Thiers? 
Thank Heaven, his day is past ! I don’t know 
any unmarried woman in Paris, not even Vale- 
rie — I mean Mademoiselle Duplessis — who has 
so exquisite a taste in dress as Mademoiselle 
Cicogna. Generally speaking, the taste of a fe- 
male author is atrocious.” 

“Really — I did not observe her dress. I am 
no critic on subjects so dainty as the dress of la- 
dies, or the tastes of female authors.” 

“Pardon me,” said the beau Marquis, grave-. 
Iv. “As to dress, I think that is so essential a 
thing in the mind of woman that no man who 
cares about women ought to disdain critical study 
of it. In woman refinement of character is nev- 
er found in vulgarity of dress. I have only ob- 
served that truth since I came up from Bre- 
tagne. ” 

“ I presume, my dear Marquis, that you may 
have read in Bretagne books which very few not 
being professed scholars have ever read at Paris ; 
and possibly you may remember that Horace 
ascribes the most exquisite refinement in dress, 
denoted by the untranslatable words ‘ simplex 
munditiis,' to a lady who was not less distin- 
guished by the ease and rapidity with which she 


184 


THE PARISIANS. 


could change her affection. Of course that allu- 
sion does not apply to Mademoiselle Cicogna ; 
but there are many other exquisitely dressed la- 
dies at Paris of whom an ill-fated admirer 

‘ fidem 

Mutatosque deos debit.’ 

Now, with your permission, we will adjourn to 
the box of letters. ” 

The box being produced and unlocked, Alain 
looked with conscientious care at its contents 
before he passed over to Graham’s inspection a 
few epistles, in which the Englishman immedi- 
ately detected the same handwriting as that of 
the letter from Louise which Richard King had 
bequeathed to him. 

They were arranged and numbered chrono- 
logically. 

Letter I. 

“ Dear M. le Marquis, — How can I thank 
you sufficiently for obtaining and remitting to 
me those certificates? You are too aware of 
the unhappy episode in my life not to know how 
inestimable is the service you render me. I am 
saved all further molestation from the man who 
had indeed no right over my freedom, but whose 
persecution might compel me to the scandal and 
disgrace of an appeal to the law for protection, 
and the avowal of the illegal marriage into which 
I was duped. I would rather be torn limb from 
limb by wild horses, like the queen in the his- 
tory books, than dishonor myself and the ances- 
try which I may at least claim on the mother’s 
side by proclaiming that I had lived with that 
low Englishman as his wife, when I was only — 

0 Heavens ! I can not conclude the sentence. 

“No, M. le Marquis, I am in no want of the 

pecuniary aid you so generously wish to press 
on me. Though I know not where to address 
my poor dear uncle — though I doubt, even if I 
did, whether I could venture to confide to him 
the secret known only to yourself as to the name 

1 now bear — and if he hear of me at all he must 
believe me dead — yet I have enough left of the 
money he last remitted to me for present sup- 
port: and when that fails, I think, what with 
my knowledge of English and such other slen- 
der accomplishments as I possess, I could main- 
tain myself as a teacher or governess in some 
German family. At all events, I will write to 
you again soon, and I entreat you to let me 
know all you can learn about my uncle. I feel 
so grateful to you for your just disbelief of the 
horrible calumny which must be so intolerably 
galling to a man so proud, and, whatever his 
errors, so incapable of a baseness. 

“Direct to me Poste restante^ Augsburg. 

“Yours, with all consideration, 

(( » 


Letter II. 

(Seven months after the date of Letter I.) 

“ Augsbueg. 

“Dear M. le Marquis, — I thank you for 
your kind little note informing me of tlie pains 
you have taken, as yet with no result, to ascer- 
tain what has become of my unfortunate uncle. 
My life since I last wrote has been a very quiet 
one. I have been teaching among a few fami- 
lies here, and among my pupils are two little 


girls of very high birth. They have taken so 
great a fancy to me tliat their mother has just 
asked me to come and reside at their house as 
governess. What wonderfully kind hearts those 
Germans have, so simple, so truthful! They 
raise no troublesome questions — accept my own 
story implicitly.” (Here follow a few common- 
place sentences about the German character, 
and a postscript.) “I go into my new home 
next week. When you hear more of my uncle, 
direct to me at the Countess von Rudesheim, 
Schloss N M , near Berlin. ” 

“Rudesheim!” Could this be the relation, 
possibly the wife, of the Count von Rudesheim 
with whom Graham had formed acquaintance last 
year ? 

Letter III. 

(Between three and four years after the date of 
, the last.) 

“You startle me indeed, dear M. le Marquis. 
My uncle said to have been recognized in Al- 
geria, under another name, a soldier in the Al- 
gerine army ? My dear, proud, luxurious uncle ! 
Ah, I can not believe it any more than you do : 
but I long eagerly for such further news as you 
can learn of him. For myself, I shall perhaps 
surprise you when I say I am about to be mar- 
ried. Nothing can exceed the amiable kindness 
I have received from the Rudesheims since I 
have been in their house. For the last year 
especially I have been treated on equal terms as 
one of the family. Among the habitual visitors 
at the house is a gentleman of noble birth, but 
not of rank too high, nor of fortune too great, to 
make a marriage with the French widowed gov- 
erness a mesalliance. I am sure that he loves 
me sincerely ; and he is the only man I ever met 
whose love I have cared to win. We are to be 
married in the course of the year. Of course he 
is ignorant of my painful history, and will never 

learn it. And, after all, Louise D is dead. 

In the home to which I am about to remove 
there is no probability that the wretched En- 
glishman can ever cross my path. My secret is 
as safe with you as in the grave that holds her 

whom in the name of Louise D you once 

loved. Henceforth I shall trouble you no more 
with my letters ; but if you hear any thing de- 
cisively authentic of my uncle’s fate, write to me 
a line at any time, directed as before to Madame 
M , inclosed to the Countess von Rudesheim. 

“And accept, for all the kindness you have 
ever shown me, as to one whom you did not dis- 
dain to call a kinswoman, the assurance of my 
undying gratitude. In the alliance she now 
makes your kinswoman does not discredit the 
name through which she is connected with the 
yet loftier line of Rocheb riant.” 

To this letter the late Marquis had appended in 
pencil : “Of course a Rochebriant never denies 
the claim of a kinswoman, even though a draw- 
ing-master’s daughter. Beautiful creature, Lou- 
ise, but a termagant ! I could not love Venus if 
she were a termagant. L.’s head turned by the 
unlucky discovery that her mother was noble. 
In one form or other every woman has the same 
disease — vanity. Name of her intended not men- 
'tioned — easily found out.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


185 


The next letter was dated May 7, 1859, on 
black-edged paper, and contained but these lines: 

“I was much comforted by your kind visit 
yesterday, dear Marquis. My affliction has been 
heavy. But for the last two years my poor hus- 
band’s conduct has rendered my life unhappy, 
and I am recovering the shock of his sudden 
death. It is true that I and the children are 
left very ill provided for ; but I can not accept 
your generous offer of aid. Have no fear as to 
my future fate. Adieu, my dear Marquis ! This 
will reach you just before you start for Naples. 
Bon voyaged 

There was no address on this note — no post- 
mark on the envelope — evidently sent by hand. 

The last note, dated 1801, March 20, was 
briefer than its predecessor. - 

“I have taken your advice, dear Marquis, 
and, overcoming all scruples, I have accepted his 
kind offer, on the condition that I am never to 
be taken to England. I had no option in this 
marriage. I can now own to you that my pov- 
erty had become urgent. 

“ Yours, with inalienable gratitude, 

£& » 

Tliis last note, too, was without postmark, 
and as evidently sent by hand. 

“There are no other letters, then, from this 
writer?” asked Graham; “and no further clew 
as to her existence?” 

“ None that I have discovered ; and I see now 
why I have preserved these letters. There is 
nothing in their contents not creditable to my 
poor father. They show how capable he was of 
good-natured, disinterested kindness toward even 
a distant relation of whom he could certainly not 
have been proud, judging not only by his own 
penciled note, or by the writer’s condition as a 
governess, but by her loose sentiments as to the 
marriage tie. I have not the slightest idea who 
she could be. I never at least heard of one con- 
nected, however distantly, with my family whom 
I could identify with the writer of these letters.” 

“I may hold them a short time in my posses- 
sion ?” 

“Pardon me a preliminary question. If I 
may venture to form a conjecture, the object of 
your search must be connected with your coun- 
tryman, whom the lady politely calls the ‘ wretch- 
ed Englishman but I own I should not like to 
lend, through these letters, a pretense to any 
steps that may lead to a scandal in which my fa- 
ther’s name or that of any member of my family 
could be mixed up.” 

“ Marquis, it is to prevent the possibility of all 
scandal that I ask you to trust these letters to 
my discretion.” 

“ B'oi de gentilhommef' 

“ Foi de gentilhomme V' 

“Take them. When and where shall we 
meet again ?” 

“Soon, I trust; but I must leave Paris this 
evening. I am bound to Berlin in quest of this 
Countess von Rudesheirn : and I fear that in a 
very few days intercourse between France and the 
German frontier will be closed upon travelers. ” 

After a few more words not worth recording, 
the two young men shook hands and parted. 


CHAPTER V. 

It was with an interest languid and listless in- 
deed, compared with that which he would have 
felt a day before, that Graham mused over the 
remarkable advances toward the discovery of 
Louise Duval which were made in the letters he 
had perused. She had married, then, first a for- 
eigner whom she spoke of as noble, and whose 
name and residence could be easily found through 
the Countess von Rudesheirn. The marriage did 
not seem to have been a happy one. Left a wid- 
ow in reduced circumstances, she had married 
again, evidently without affection. She was liv- 
ing so late as 1861, and she had children living 
in 1859. Was the child referred to by Richard 
King one of them ? 

The tone and style of the letters served to 
throw some light on the character of the writer : 
they evinced pride, stubborn self-will, and una- 
miable hardness of nature ; but her rejection of 
all pecuniary aid from a man like the late Mar- 
quis de Rocliebriant betokened a certain dignity 
of sentiment. She was evidently, whatever her 
strange ideas about her first marriage with Rich- 
ard King, no vulgar woman of gallantry ; and 
there must have been some sort of charm about 
her to have excited a friendly interest in a kins- 
man so remote, and a man of pleasure so selfish, 
as her high-born correspondent. 

But what now, so far as concerned his own 
happiness, was the hope, the probable certainty, 
of a speedy fulfillment of the trust bequeathed to 
him? Whether the result, in the death of the 
mother, and more especially of the child, left 
him rich, or, if the last survived, reduced his 
fortune to a modest independence, Isaura was 
equally lost to him, and fortune became value- 
less. But his first emotions on recovering from 
the shock of hearing from Isaura’s lips that she 
was irrevocably affianced to another were not 
those of self-reproach. They were those of in- 
tense bitterness against her who, if really so 
much attached to him as he had been led to 
hope, could within so brief a time reconcile her 
heart to marriage with another. This bitterness 
was no doubt unjust ; but I believe it to be nat- 
ural to men of a nature so proud and of affec- 
tions so intense as Graham’s, under similar de- 
feats of hope. Resentment is the first impulse 
in a man loving with the whole ardor of his soijl, 
rejected, no matter why or wherefore, by the 
woman by whom he had cause to believe he him- 
self was beloved ; and though Graham’s stand- 
ard of honor was certainly the reverse of low, 
yet man does not view honor in the same light 
as woman does, when involved in analogous dif- 
ficulties of position. Graham conscientiously 
thought that if Isaura so loved him as to render 
distasteful an engagement to another which could 
only very recently have been contracted, it would 
be more honorable frankly so to tell the accepted 
suitor than to leave him in ignorance that her 
heart was estranged. But these engagements 
are very solemn things with girls like Isaura, 
and hers was no ordinary obligation of woman- 
honor. Had the accepted one been superior in 
rank — fortune — all that flatters the ambition of 
woman in the choice of marriage ; had he been 
resolute and strong and self-dependent amidst 
the trials and perils of life — then possibly the 
woman’s honor might find excuse in escaping the 


186 


THE PARISIANS. 


penalties of its pledge. But the poor, ailing, in- 
firm, morbid boy-j)oet, who looked to her as his 
saving angel in body, in mind and soul — to say 
to him, “ Give me back my freedom,” would be 
to abandon him to death and to sin. But Gra- 
ham could not of course divine why what he as 
a man thought right was to Isaura as woman 
impossible: and he returned to his old preju- 
diced notion that there is no real depth and ar- 
dor of affection for human lovers in the poetess 
whose mind and heart are devoted to the crea- 
tion of imaginary heroes. Absorbed in reverie, 
he took his way slowly and with downcast looks 
toward the British Embassy, at which it was 
well to ascertain whether the impending war yet 
necessitated special passports for Germany. 

“ Bonjour^ cher ami,'' said a pleasant voice; 
“and how long have you been at Paris?” 

“Oh, my dear M. Savarin! charmed to see 
you looking so well ! Madame well too, I trust ? 
My kindest regards to her. I have been in Par- 
is but a day or two, and I leave this evening.” 

“So soon? The war frightens you away, I 
suppose. Which way are you going now ?” 

“To the British Embassy.” 

“ Well, I will go with you so far — it is in my 
own direction. I have to call at tlie charming 
Italian’s with pongratulalions — on news I only 
heard this morning.” 

“You mean Mademoiselle Cicogna — and the 
news that demands congratulations — her ap- 
proaching marriage ! ” 

“itfora Dieul when could you have heard of 
that ?” 

“ Last night, at the house of M. Duplessis.” 

“ Parhleu ! I shall scold her well for cojifid- 
ing to her new friend Valerie the secret she kept 
from her old friends, my wife and myself.” 

“ By-the-way,” said Graham, with a tone of 
admirably feigned indifference, “ who is the 
happy man ? That part of the secret I did not 
hear. ” 

“Can’t you guess?” 

“No.” 

“ Gustave Rameau.” 

“ Ah !” Graham almost shrieked, so sharp and 
shrill was his cry. “Ah! I ought indeed to 
have guessed that !” 

“ Madame Savarin, I fancy, helped to make 
up the marriage. I hope it may turn out well ; 
certainly it will be his salvation. May it be for 
her happiness !” 

“No doubt of that! Two poets — born for 
each other, I dare say. Adieu, my dear Sava- 
rin ! Here we are at the Embassy.” 


CHAPTER VI. 

That evening Graham found himself in the 
coupe of the express train to Strasburg. He 
had sent to engage the whole coupe to himself, 
but that was impossible. One place was be- 
spoken as far as C , after which Graham 

might prosecute his journey alone on paying for 
the three places. 

When he took his seat another man was in 
the further corner, whom he scarcely noticed. 
'I'he train shot rapidly on for some leagues. 
Profound silence in the coup^, save at moments 
those heavy impatient sighs that come from the 


very depth of the heart, nnd of which he who 
sighs is unconscious, burst from the Englishman's 
lips, and drew on him the observant side glance 
of his fellow-traveler. 

At length the fellow-traveler said, in very good 
English, though with French accent, “Would 
you object. Sir, to my lighting my little carriage 
lantern ? I am in the habit of reading in the 
night train, and the wretched lamp they give us 
does not permit that. But if you wish to sleep, 
and my lantern would prevent you doing so, con- 
sider my request unasked.” 

“You are most courteous. Sir. Pray light 
your lantern. That will not interfere with my 
sleep. ” 

As Graham thus answered, far away from the 
place and the moment as his thoughts were, it 
yet faintly struck him that he had heard that voice 
before. 

The man produced a small lantern, which he 
attached to the window-sill, and drew forth from 
a small leathern bag sundry newspapers and 
pamphlets. Graham flung himself back, and in 
a minute or so again came his sigh. “Allow 
me to offer you those evening journals ; you may 
not have had time to read them before starting,” 
said the fellow-traveler, leaning forward, and ex- 
tending the newspapers with one hand, w’hile 
with the other he lifted his lantern. Graham 
turned, and the faces of the two men w'ere close 
to each other — Graham with his traveling-cap 
drawn over his brows, the other with head un- 
covered. 

“ Monsieur Lebeau !” 

“ Bon soir, Mr. Lamb !” 

Again silence for a moment or so. Monsieur 
Lebeau then broke it : 

“I think, Mr. Lamb, that in better society 
than that of the Eauboui’g Montniartre you are 
known under another name.” 

Graham had no heart then for the stage-play 
of a part, and answered, with quiet haughtiness, 
“Possibly. And what name?” 

“Graham Vane. And, Sir,” continued Le- 
beau, with a haughtiness equally quiet, but some- 
what more menacing, “since we two gentlemen 
find ourselves thus close, do I ask too much if I 
inquire why you condescended to seek my ac- 
quaintance in disguise?” 

“ Monsieur le Vicomte de Mauleon, when you 
talk of disguise, is it too much to inquire why 
my acquaintance was accepted by Monsieur Le- 
beau ?” 

“Ha! Then you confess that it was Victor 
de Mauleon whom 3’ou sought when you first 
visited the Cafe Jean Jacques ?" 

“ Frankly I confess it.” 

Monsieur Lebeau drew himself back, and 
seemed to reflect. 

“I see! Solely for the purpose of learning 
whether Victor de Mauleon could give you an}^ 
information about Louise Duval. Is it so ?” 

“ Monsieur le Vicomte, you say truly.” 

Again M. Lebeau paused as if in reflection ; 
and Graham, in that state of mind when a man 
who may most despise and detest the practice of 
dueling, may \’et feel a thrill of delight if some 
homicide would be good enough to put him out 
of his misery, flung aside his cap, lifted his broad, 
frank forehead, and stamped his boot impatient- 
ly, as if to provoke a quarrel. 

M. Lebeau lowered his spectacles, and with 


THE PARISIANS. 


187 


those calm, keen, searching eyes of his gazed at 
the Englishman. 

“ It strikes me,” he said, with a smile, the 
fascination of which not even those faded whis- 
kers could disguise — “ it strikes me that there 
are two ways in which gentlemen such as you 
and I are can converse : firstly, with reservation 
and guard against each other ; secondly,, with 
perfect openness. Perhaps of the two I have 
more need of reservation and wary guard against 
any stranger than you have. Allow me to pro- 
pose the alternative — perfect openness. What 
say you ?” and he extended his hand. 

“Perfect openness,” answered Graham, soft- 
ened into sudden liking for this once terrible 
swordsman, and shaking, as an Englishman 
shakes, the hand held out to him in peace by 
the man from whom he had anticipated quarrel. 

“Permit me now, before you address any 
questions to me, to put one to you. How did 
you learn that Victor de Mauleon was identical 
with Jean Lebeau ?” 

“ I heard that from an agent of the police.” 

“Ah!” 

“ Whom I consulted as to the means of ascer- 
taining whether Louise Duval was alive — if so, 
where she could be found.” 

“ I thank you very much for your information. 
I had no notion that the police of Paris had di- 
vined the original alias of poor Monsieur Le- 
beau, though something occurred at Lyons which 
made me suspect it. Strange that the govern- 
ment, knowing through the police that Victor de 
Mauleon, a writer they had no reason to favor, 
had been in so humble a position, should never, 
even in their official journals, have thought it 
prudent to say so I But, now I think of it, what 
if they had? They could prove nothing against 
Jean Lebeau. They could but say, ‘Jean Le- 
beau is suspected to be too warm a lover of lib- 
erty, too earnest a friend of the people, and Jean 
Lebeau is the editor of Le Sens Conimun.' Why, 
that assertion would have made Victor de Mau- 
leon the hero of the Reds, the last thing a pru- 
dent government could desire. I thank you cor- 
dially for your frank reply. Now what question 
would you put to me ?” 

“ In one word, all you can tell me about Lou- 
ise Duval.” 

“You shall have it. I had heard vaguely in 
my young days that a half-sister of mine by my 
father’s first marriage with Mademoiselle de 
Beauvilliers had — when in advanced middle life 
he married a second time — conceived a dislike 
for her step-mother ; and, being of age, with an 
independent fortune of her own, had quitted the 
house, taken up her residence witli an elderly 
female relative, and there had contracted a mar- 
riage with a man who gave her lessons in draw- 
ing. After that marriage, which my father in 
vain tried to prevent, my sister was renounced 
by her family. That was all I knew till, after I 
came into my inheritance by the death of both 
my parents, I learned from my father’s confiden- 
tial lawyer that the drawing-master, M. Duval, 
had soon dissipated his wife’s fortune, become a 
widower with one child — a girl — and fallen into 
great distress. He came to my father, begging for 
pecuniary aid. My father, though by no means 
rich, consented to allow him a yearly pension, 
on condition that he never revealed to his child 
her connection with our family. The man agreed 


to the condition, and called at my father’s law- 
yer quarterly for his annuity. But the lawyer 
informed me that this deduction from my income 
had ceased, that M. Duval had not for* a year 
called or sent for the sum due to him, and that 
he must therefore be dead. One day my valet 
informed me that a young lady wished to see 
me — in those days young ladies very often called 
on me. I desired her to be shown in. There 
entered a young creature, almost of my own age, 
who, to my amazement, saluted me as uncle. 
J'his was the child of my half-sister. Her fa- 
ther had been dead several months, fulfilling very 
faithfully the condition on which he had held his 
pension, and the girl never dreaming of the claims 
that, if wise, poor child, she ought not to have 
cared for — viz., to that obsolete, useless pauper 
birthright, a branch on the family tree of a French 
noble. But in pinch of circumstance, and from 
female curiosity, hunting among the papers her 
father had left for some clew to the reasons for 
the pension he had received, she found letters 
from her mother, letters from my father, which 
indisputably proved that she was grandchild to 
the feu Vicomte de Mauleon, and niece to my- 
self. Her story as told to me was very pitiable. 
Conceiving herself to be nothing higher in birth 
than daughter to this drawing- master, at his 
death, poor, penniless orphan that she was, she 
had accepted the hand of an English student of 
medicine whom she did not care for. Miserable 
with this man, on finding by the documents I re- 
fer to that she was my niece, she came to me for 
comfort and counsel. What counsel could I or 
any man give to her but to make the best of 
what had happened, and live with her husband ? 
But then she started another question. It seems 
that she had been talking with some one — I think 
her landlady — or some other woman with whom 
she had made acquaintance. Was she legally mar- 
ried to this man ? Had he not entrapped her 
ignorance into a false marriage ? This became 
a grave question, and I sent at once to my law- 
yer. On hearing the circumstances, he at once 
declared that the marriage was not legal, accord- 
ing to the laws of France. But, doubtless, her 
English soi-disant husband was not cognizant of 
the French law, and a legal marriage could with 
his assent be at once solemnized. Monsieur 
Vane, I can not find words to convey to you the 
joy that poor girl showed in her face and in her 
words when she learned that she was not bound 
ta pass her life with that man as his wife. It 
was in vain to talk and reason with her. Then 
arose the other question, scarcely less important. 
True, the marriage was not legal, but would it 
not be better on all accounts to take steps to 
have it formally annulled, thus freeing her from 
the harassment of any claim the Englishman 
might advance, and enabling her to establish the 
facts in a right position, not injurious to her hon- 
or in the eyes of any future suitor to her hand ? 
She would not hear of such a proposal. She de- 
clared that she could not bring to the family she 
pined to re-enter the scandal of disgrace. To al- 
low that she had made such a mesalliance would 
be bad enough in itself ; but to proclaim to the 
world that, though nominally the wife, she had, 
in fact, been only the mistress of this medical 
student — she would rather throw herself into the 
Seine. All she desired was to find some refuge® 
some hiding-place for a time, whence she could 


188 


THE PARISIANS. 


write to the man, informing him that he had no j 
lawful hold on her. Doubtless he would not 1 
seek then to molest her. He would return to his | 
own country, and be effaced from her life. And j 
then, her story unknown, she might form a more 
suitable alliance. Fiery young creature though 
she was — true De Maule'on in being so fiery — 
she interested me strongly I should say that 
she was wonderfully handsome ; and though im- 
perfectly educated, and brought up in circum- 
stances so lowly, there was nothing common 
about her — a certain ye ne sais quoi of stateliness 
and race. At all events, she did with me what 
she wished. I agreed to aid her desire of a ref- 
uge and hiding-place. Of course I could not 
lodge her in my own apartment, but I induced 
a female relation of her'- mother’s, an old lady 
living at Versailles, to receive her, stating her 
birth, but of course concealing her illegal mar- 
riage. 

“ From time to time I went to see her. But 
one day I found this restless, bright-plurnaged 
bird flown. Among the ladies who visited at 
her relative’s house was a certain Madame Ma- 
rigny, a very pretty young widow. Madame 
Marigny and Louise formed a sudden and inti- 
mate friendship. The widow was moving from 
Versailles into an apartment at Paris, and invited 
Louise to share it. She had consented. I was 
not pleased at this ; for the widow was too young, 
and too much of a coquette, to be a safe compan- 
ion to Louise. But, though professing much 
gratitude and great regard for me, I had no pow'- 
er of controlling the poor girl’s actions. Her 
nominal husband, meanwhile, had left France, 
and nothing more was heard or known of him. I 
saw that the best thing that could possibly be- 
fall Louise was marriage with some one rich 
enough to gratify her taste for luxury and pomp ; 
and that if such a marriage offered itself she 
might be induced to free it from all possible 
embarrassment by procuring the annulment of 
tlie former, from which she had hitherto shrunk 
in such revolt. This opportunity presented it- 
self. A man already rich, and in a career that 
promised to make him infinitely richer, an asso- 
ciate of mine in those days when I was rapidly 
squandering the remnant of my inheritance — 
this man saw her at the opera in company with 
Madame Marigny, fell violently in love with her, 
and ascertaining her relation.ship to me, besought 
an introduction. I was delighted to give it ; and, 
to say the truth, I was tlien so reduced to the 
bottom of my casket, I felt that it was becoming 
impossible for me to continue the aid I had hith- 
erto given to Louise — and what then would be- 
come of her ? I thought it fair to tell Louvier — ” 

“ Louvier — the financier?” 

“Ah, that was a slip of the tongue, but no 
matter; there is no reason for concealing his 
name. I thought it right, I say, to tell Louvier 
confidentially the history of the unfortunate il- 
legal marriage. It did not damp his ardor. He 
wooed her to the best of his power, but she evi- 
dently took him into great dislike. One day she 
sent for me in much excitement, showed me some 
advertisements in the French journals which, 
though not naming her, evidently pointed at her, 
and must have been dictated by her soi-disant 
husband. The advertisements might certainly 
^ad to her discovery if she remained in Paris. 
She entreated my consent to remove elsewhere. 


j Madame Marigny had her own reason for leav- 
1 ing Paris, and would accompany her. I supplied 
I her with the necessary means, and a day or two 
j afterward she and her friend departed, as I un- 
derstood, for Brussels. I received no letter from 
her ; and my own affairs so seriously preoccu- 
pied me that poor Louise might have passed al- 
together out of my thoughts had it not been for 
the suitor she had left in despair behind. Lou- 
vier besought me to ascertain her address ; but 
I could give him no other clew to it than that 
she said she was going to Brussels, but sliould 
soon remove to some quiet village. It was not 
for a long time — I can’t remember how long — it 
might be several weeks, perhaps two or three 
months — that I received a short note from her, 
stating that she waited for a small remittance, 
the last she w'ould accept from me, as she was 
resolved, so soon as her health would permit, to 
find means to -maintain herself — and telling me 
to direct to her, Poste restante, Aix-la-Chapelle. 
I sent her the sum she asked, perhaps a little 
more, but with a confession reluctantly wrung 
from me that I was a ruined man ; and I urged 
her to think very seriously before she refused the 
competence and position which a union with M. 
Louvier would insure. 

‘ ‘ This last consideration so pressed on me that 
when Louvier called on me, I think that day or 
the next, I gave him Louise’s note, and told him 
that if he were still as much in love with lier as 
ever, les absens ont toujours tort, and he had 
better go to Aix-la-Chapelle and find her out ; 
that he had my hearty approval of his wooing 
and consent to his marriage, though I still urged 
the wisdom and fairness, if she would take the 
preliminary step — which, after all, the French 
lawS- frees as much as possible from pain and scan- 
dal — of annulling the irregular marriage into 
which her child-like youth had been decoyed. 

“Louvier left me for Aix-la-Chapelle. The 
very next day came that cruel affliction which 
made me a prey to the most intolerable calum- 
ny, which robbed me of every friend, which sent 
me forth from my native country penniless, and 
resolved to be nameless — until — until — well, un- 
til my hour could come again — every dog, if not 
hanged, has its day. When that affliction befell 
me I quitted France — heard no more of Louvier 
nor of Louise ; indeed, no letter addressed to me 
at Paris would have reached — ” 

The man paused here, evidently with painful 
emotion. He resumed in the quiet matter-of- 
fact way in w'hich he had commenced his nar- 
rative : 

“ Louise had altogether faded out of my re- 
membrance'until your question revived it. As it 
happened, the question came at the moment 
when I meditated resuming my real name and 
social position. In so doing I sliould, of course, 
come in contact with my old acquaintance Lou- 
vier, and the name of Louise was necessarily 
associated with his. I called on him, and made 
myself known. The slight information I gave 
you as to my niece was gleaned from him. I 
may now say more. It appears that when he 
arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle he found that Louise 
Duval had left it a day or two previously, and, 
according to scandal, had been for some time 
courted by a wealthy and noble lover, whom she 
had gone to Munich to meet. Louvier believed 
this tale, quitted Aix-Ia-Chapelle indignantly. 


THE PARISIANS. 


189 


and never heard more of her. The probability 
is, M. Vane, that she must have been long dead. 
But if living still, I feel quite sure that she will 
communicate with me some day or otlier. Now 
that I have re-appeared in Paris in my own name 
— entered into a career that, for good or for evil, 
must ere long bring my name very noisily before 
the public — Louise can not fail to hear of my ex- 
istence and my whereabouts ; and, unless I am 
utterly mistaken as to her character, she will as- 
suredly inform me of her own. Oblige me with 
your address, and in that case I will let you 
know. Of course I take for granted the assur- 
ance you gave me last year, that you only desire 
to discover her in order to render her some bene- 
fit, not to injure or molest her?” 

“Certainly. To that assurance I pledge my 
honor. Any letter with which you may favor 
me had better be directed to my London ad- 
dress; here is my card. But, M. le Vicomte, 
there is one point on which pray pardon me if I 
question you still. Had you no suspicion that 
there w'as one reason why this lady might have 
quitted Paris so hastily, and have so shrunk 
from the thought of a marriage so advantageous, 
in a worldly point of view, as that with M. Lou- 
vier — namely, that she anticipated the proba- 
bility of becoming the mother of a child by the 
man whom she refused to acknowledge as a hus- 
band ?” 

“ That idea did not strike me until you asked 
me if she had a child. Should your conjecture 
be correct, it would obviously increase her repug- 
nance to apply for the annulment of her illegal 
marriage. But if Louise is still living and comes 
across me, I do not doubt that, the motives for 
concealment no longer operating, she will confide 
to me the truth. Since we have been talking to- 
gether thus frankly, I suppose I may fairly ask 
whether I do not guess correctly in supposing 
that this soi-disant husband, whose name I for- 
get — Mac — something, perhaps Scotch — I think 
she said he was Ecossais — is dead, and has left 
by will some legacy to Louise and any child she 
may have borne to him ?” 

“Not exactly so. The man, as you say, is 
dead ; but he bequeathed no legacy to the lady 
who did not hold herself married to him. But 
there are those connected with him who, know- 
ing the history, think that some compensation is 
due for the wrong so unconsciously done to her, 
and yet more to any issue of a marriage not 
meant to be irregular or illegal. Permit me now 
to explain why I sought you in another guise and 
name than my own. I could scarcely place in 
M. Lebeau the confidence which I now unreserv- 
edly place in the Vicomte de Mauleon. ” 

“ Cela va sans dire. You believed, then, that 
calumny about the jewels. You do not believe it 
now?” 

“Now! my amazement is that any one who 
had known you could believe it.” 

“Oh, how often, and with tears of rage, in 
my exile — my wanderings — have I asked that 
question of myself! That rage has ceased ; and 
I liave but one feeling left for that credulous, 
fickle Paris, of which one day I was the idol, 
the next the by- word. Well, a man sometimes 
plays chess more skillfully for having been long 
a mere by-stander. He understands better how 
to move and when to sacrifice the pieces. Pol- 
itics, M. Vane, is the only exciting game left to 


me at my years. At yours there is still that of 
love. How time flies ! we are nearing the sta- 
tion at which I descend. I have kinsfolk of my 
mother's in these districts. They are not Im- 
perialists ; they are said to be powerful in the 
department. But before I apply to them in 
my own name, I think it prudent that M. Le- 
beau should quietly ascertain what is their real 
strength, and what would be the prospects of 
success if Victor de Mauleon offered himself as 
Depute at the next election. Wish him joy, 
M. Vane! If he succeed, you will hear of him 
some day crowned in the Capitol, or hurled from 
the Tarpeian rock.” 

Here the train stopped. The fitlse Lebeau 
gathered up his papers, re-adjusted his spectacles 
and his bag, descended lightly, and, pressing 
Graham’s hand as he paused at the door, said, 
“ Be sure I will not forget yonr address if I have 
any thing to say. Bon voyage!" 

♦ 

CHAPTER VII. 

Graham continued his journey to Strasbnrg. 
On arriving there he felt very unwell. Strong 
though his frame was, the anguish and self-strug- 
gle tlirough which he had passed since the day 
he had received in London Mrs. Morley’s letter, 
till that on which he had finally resolved on his 
course of conduct at Paris, and the shock which 
had annihilated his hopes in Isaura’s rejection, 
had combined to exhaust his endurance, and 
fever had already commenced when he took his 
place in the coupe. If there be a thing which a 
man should not do when his system is under- 
mined, and his pulse between ninety and one 
hundred, it is to travel all night by a railway ex- 
press. Nevertheless, as the Englishman’s will 
was yet stronger than his frame, he would not 
give himself more than an hour’s rest, and again 
started for Berlin. Long before he got to Ber- 
lin the will failed him as well as the frame. He 
was lifted out of the carriage, taken to a hotel 
in a small German town, and six hours after- 
ward he was delirious. It was fortunate for him 
that under such circumstances plenty of money 
and Scott’s circular notes for some hundreds 
were found in his pocket-book, so that he did 
not fail to receive attentive nursing and skillful 
medical treatment. There, for the present, I 
must leave him— leave him for how long ? But 
any village apothecary could say that fever such 
as his must run its course. He was still in bed, 
and very dimly — and that but at times-^con- 
scious, when the German armies were gathering 
round the pen-fold of Sedan. 

»■' 

CHAPTER VIII. 

When the news of the disastrous day at Se- 
dan reached Paris, the first effect was that of 
timid consternation. There were a few cries of 
Decheance! fewer still of Vive la Repuhlique ! 
among the motley crowds ; but they were faint, 
and chiefly by ragged gamins. A small body 
repaired to Trochu and offered him the sceptre, 
which he politely declined. A more important 
and respectable body — for it comprised the ma- 


190 


THE PARISIANS. 


jority of the Corps L^gislatif — urged Palikao 
to accept the temporary dictatorship, which the 
War Minister declined with equal politeness. In 
both these overtures it was clear that the impulse 
of the proposers was toward any form of govern- 
ment rather than republican. The sergens de 
ville were sufficient that day to put down riot. 
They did make a charge on a mob, which imme- 
diately ran away. 

The morning of that day the Council of Ten 
were summoned by Lebeau — ininvs only Ra- 
meau, who was still too unwell to attend, and 
the Belgian, not then at Paris ; but their place 
was supplied by the two traveling members, 
who had been absent from the meeting before re- 
corded. These were conspirators better known 
in history than those I have before described; 
])rofessional conspirators — personages who from 
tl^ir youth upward had done little else but con- 
spire. Following the discreet plan pursued else- 
where throughout this humble work, I give their 
names other than they bore. One, a very swarthy 
and ill-favored man, between forty and fifty, I 
call Paul Grimm — by origin a German, but by 
rearing and character French ; from the hair on 
his head, staring up rough and ragged as a bram- 
ble-bush, to the soles of small narrow feet, shod 
with dainty care, he was a personal coxcomb, 
and spent all he could spare on his dress. A 
clever man, not ill-educated — a vehement and 
effective speaker at a club. Vanity and an 
amorous temperament had made him a cohspir- 
ator, since he fancied he interested the ladies 
more in that capacity than any other. His com- 
panion, Edgar Ferrier, would have been a jour- 
nalist, only hitherto his opinions had found no 
readers ; the opinions were those of Marat. He 
rejoiced in thinking that his hour for glory, so 
long deferred, had now arrived. He was thor- 
oughly sincere : his father and grandfather had 
died in a mad-house. Both these men, insigni^- 
cant in ordinary times, were likely to become of 
terrible importance in the crisis of a revolution. 
They both had great power with the elements 
that form a Parisian mob. The instructions 
given to these members of the council by Le- 
beau were brief : they were summed up in the 
one word, Decheance. The formidable nature of 
a council apparently so meanly constituted be- 
came strikingly evident at that moment, because 
it was so small in number, while each one of 
these could put in movement a large section of 
the populace ; secondly, because, unlike a revo- 
lutionary club or a numerous association, no 
time was wasted in idle speeches, and all were 
under the orders of one man of clear head and 
resolute purpose ; and thirdly, and above all, be- 
cause one man supplied the treasury, and money 
for an object desired was liberally given and 
promptly at hand. The meeting did not last 
ten minutes, and about two hours afterward its 
effects were visible. From Montmartre and 
Belleville and Montretout poured streams of 
ouvriers, with whom Armand Monnier was a 
chief, and the Medecin des Pauvres an oracle. 
Grimm and Ferrier headed other detachments 
that startled the well-dressed idlers on the Bou- 
levards. The stalwart figure of the Pole was 
seen on the Place de la Concorde, tow'ering 
amidst other refugees, amidst which glided the 
Italian champion of humanity. The cry of De- 
cheance became louder. But as yet there were 


only few cries of Vive la Repuhlique — such a cry 
was not on the orders issued by Lebeau. At 
midnight the crowd round the hall of the Corps 
Legislatif is large : cries of La Decheance loud 
— a few cries, very feeble, of Vive la Repuhlique! 

What followed on the 4th — the marvelous au- 
dacity with which half a dozen lawyers belong- 
ing to a pitiful minority in a Chamber elected by 
universal suffrage walked into the Hotel de Ville, 
and said, “The republic is established, and we 
are its government” — history has told too recent- 
ly for me to narrate. On the evening of the 5th 
the Council of Ten met again : the Pole ; the 
Italian radiant; Grimm and Ferrier much ex- 
cited and rather drunk ; the Medecin des Pau- 
vres thoughtful ; and Armand Monnier gloomy. 
A rumor has spread that General Trochu, in ac- 
cepting the charge imposed on him, has exacted 
from the government the solemn assurance of re- 
spect for God, and for the rights of Family and 
Property. The atheist is very indignant at the 
assent of the government to the first proposition ; 
Monnier equally indignant at the assent to the 
second and third. What has that honest ouvrier 
conspired for — what has he suffered for — of 
late nearly starved for — but to marry another 
man’s wdfe, getting rid of his own, and to legal- 
ize a participation in the property of his employ- 
er ? And now he is no better off than before. 
“There must be another revolution,” he wdiis- 
pers to the atheist. 

“ Certainly,” w'hispers back the atheist ; “he 
who desires to better this w'orld must destroy all 
belief in another.” 

The conclave was assembled when Lebeau en- 
tered by tlie private door. He took his place at 
the head of the the table, and, fixing on the 
group eyes that emitted a cold gleam through 
the spectacles, thus spoke : 

“Messieurs, or Citoyens, w'hich ye will — I no 
longer call ye confreres — you have disobeyed or 
blundered my instructions. On such an occa- 
sion disobedience and blunder are crimes equally 
heinous. ” 

Angry murmurs. 

“ Silence! Do not add mutiny to your other 
offenses. My instructions were simple and short. 
Aid in the abolition of the empire. Do not aid 
in any senseless cry for a republic or any other 
form of government. Leave that to the Legis- 
lature. What have you done ? You swelled the 
crowd that invaded the Cor])s Legislatif. You, 
Dombinsky, not even a Frenchman, dare to 
mount the president’s rostrum, and brawl forth 
your senseless jargon. You, Edgar Ferrier, 
from whom I expected better, ascend the trib- 
une, and invite the ruffians in the crowd to 
march to the prisons and release the convicts ; 
and all of you swell the mob at the Hotel de 
Ville, and inaugurate the reign of folly by crea- 
tirig an oligarchy of lawyers to resist the march 
of triumphal armies. Messieurs, I have done 
with you. You are summoned for the last time : 
the council is dissolved.” 

With these words Lebeau put on his hat, and 
turned to depart. But the Pole, who was seated 
near him, sprang to his feet, exclaiming, “Trai- 
tor, thou shalt not escape ! Comrades, he wants 
to sell us !” 

“ 1 have a right to sell you, at least, for I bought 
you, and a very bad bargain I made,” said Le- 
beau, in a tone of withering sarcasm. 


THE PARISIANS. 


“Liar!” cried the Pole, 'and seized Lebeau 
by the left hand, while with the right he drew 
forth a revolver. Perrier and Grimm, shouting, 
“ A has le ren^gat !” would have rushed forward 
in support of the Pole, but Monnier thrust him- 
self between them and their intended victim, 
crying, with a voice that dominated their yell. 

Back ! — we are not assassins.” Before he had 
finished the sentence the Pole was on his knees. 
With a vigor which no one could have expect- 
ed from the seeming sexagenarian, Lebeau had 
caught the right arm of his assailant, and twisted 
it back so mercilessly as almost to dislocate elbow 
and shoulder joint. One barrel of the revolver 
discharged itself harmlessly against the opposite 
wall, and the pistol itself then fell from the un- 
nerved hand of the would-be assassin ; and what 
with the pain and the sudden shock, the stalwart 
Dombinsky fell in the altitude of a suppliant at 
the feet of his unlooked-for vanquisher. 

Lebeau released his hold, possessed himself of 
the pistol, pointing the barrels toward Edgar 
Perrier, who stood with mouth agape and lifted 
arm arrested, and said, quietly, “ Monsieur, have 
the goodness to open that window.” Perrier me- 
chanically obeyed. “Now, hireling,” continued 
Lebeau, addressing the vanquished Pole, “choose 
between the door and the window.” “Go, my 
friend,” whispered the Italian. The Pole did not 
utter a word ; but rising nimbly, atid rubbing his 
arm, stalked to the door. There he paused a 
moment, and said, “I retire overpowered by 
numbers,” and vanished. 

“ Messieurs,” resumed Lebeau, calmly, “Ire- 
peat that the council is dissolved. In fact, its 
object is fulfilled more abruptly than any of us 
foresaw, and by means which I at least had been 
too long out of Paris to divine as possible. I 
now see that eveiy aberration of reason is possible 
to the Parisians. The object that united us was 
the fall of the empire. As I have always frank- 
ly told you, with that object achieved, separation 
commences. Each of us has his own crotchet, 
which differs from the other man’s. Pursue 
yours as you will — I pursue mine — ^you will find 
Jean Lebeau no more in Paris : il ^efface. Au 
plaisir^ mais pas au revoir.’' 

He retreated to the masked door and disap- 
peared. 

Marc le Roux, the porter, or custos, of that 
ruinous council hall, alarmed at the explosion of 
the pistol, had hurried into the room, and now 
stood unheeded by the door, with mouth agape, 
while Lebeau thus curtly dissolved the assembly. 
But when the president vanished through the se- 
cret doorway, Le Roux also retreated. Hastily 
descending the stairs, he made as quickly as his 
legs could carry him for the mouth of the alley 
in the rear of the house, through which he knew 
that Lebeau must pass. He arrived, panting 
and breathless, in time to catch hold of the ex- 
president’s arm. “Pardon, citizen,” stammered 
he ; “but do I understand that you have sent the 
Council of Ten to the devil ?” 

“ I ? Certainly not, my good Marc ; I dis- 
miss them to go where they like. If tliey prefer 
the direction you name, it is their own choice. I 
decline to accompany them, and I advise you not 
to do so.” 

“But, citizen, have you considered what is to 
become of madame? Is she to be turned out 
of the lodge ? Are my wages to stop, and ma- 

0 


191 

dame to be left without a crust to put into her 
soup ?” 

“Not so bad as that; I have just paid the 
rent of the haraque for three months in advance, 
and there is your quarter’s pay in advance also. 
My kind regards to madame, and tell her to keep 
your skin safe from the schemes of these luna- 
tics.” Thrusting some pieces of gold into the 
hands of the porter, Lebeau nodded his adieu, 
and hastened along his way. 

Absorbed in his own reflections, he did not 
turn to look behind. But if he had, he could 
not have detected the dark form of the porter 
creeping in the deep shadow of the streets with 
distant but watchful footsteps. 

CHAPTER IX. 

The conspirators, when left by their president, 
dispersed in deep, not noisy, resentment. They 
were, indeed, too stunned for loud demonstration ; 
and belonging to different grades of life, and en- 
tertaining different opinions, their confidence in 
each other seemed lost, now that the chief who 
had brought and kept them together was with- 
drawn from their union. The Italian and the 
atheist slank away, whispering to each other. 
Grimm reproached Perrier for deserting Dom- 
binsky and obeying Lebeau. Perrier accused 
Grimm of his German origin, and hinted at de- 
nouncing him as a Prussian spy. Gaspard le Noy 
linked his arm in Monnier’s ; and when they had 
gained the dark street without, leading into a 
labyrinth of desolate lanes, the M^decin des Pau- 
vres said to the mechanic, “You are a brave 
fellow, Monnier. Lebeau owes you a good turn. 
But for your cry, ‘We are not assassins,’ the 
Pole might not have been left without suppoit. 
No atmosphere is so infectious as that in which 
w’e breathe the same air of revenge : when . the 
violence of one man puts into action the anger or 
suspicion of others, they become like a pack of 
hounds, which follow the spring of the first hound, 
whether on the wdld boar or their own master. 
Even I, who am by no means hot-headed, had 
my hand on my case-knife, when the word ‘ as- 
sassin’ rebuked and disarmed me.” 

“ Nevertheless,” said Monnier, gloomily, “I 
half repent the impulse w^hich made me interfere 
to save that man. Better he should die than 
live to betray the cause we allowed him to lead.” 

“Nay, mon ami^ speaking candidly, we must 
confess that he never from the first pretended to 
advocate the cause for which you conspired. On 
the contrary, he always said that with the fall of 
the empire our union would cease, and each be- 
come free to choose his own way toward his own 
after-objects.” 

“ Yes,” answered Armand, reluctantly; “he 
said that to me privately, with still greater plain- 
ness than he said it to the council. But I an- 
swered as plainly.” 

“How?” 

“ I told him that the man who takes the first 
step in a revolution, and persuades others to go 
along with him, can not in safety stand still or 
retreat when the next step is to be taken. It is 
‘ en avant' or ‘ a /a lanterned So it shall be with 
him. Shall a fellow-being avail himself of the 
power over my mind which he derives from su- 


192 


THE PARISIANS. 


perior education or experience — break into wild 
fragments my life, heretofore tranquil, orderly, 
happy — make use of any opinions, which were 
then but harmless desires, to serve his own pur- 
pose, which was hostile to the opinions he roused 
into action — say to me, ‘ Give yourself up to de- 
stroy the first obstacle in the way of securing a 
form of society which your inclinations prefer,’ 
and then, that first obstacle destroyed, cry, ‘Halt! 
I go with you no further ; I will not help you to 
piece together the life I have induced you to 
shatter ; I will not aid you to substitute for the 
society that pained you the society that would 
please; I leave you, struggling, bewildered, mad- 
dened, in the midst of chaos within and without 
you ?’ Shall a fellow-being do this, and vanish 
with a mocking cry, ‘ Tool ! I have had enough 
of thee ; I cast thee aside as worthless lumber ?’ 
Ah ! let him beware ! The tool is of iron, and 
can be shaped to edge and point.” 

The passion with which this rough eloquence 
was uttered, and the fierce sinister expression 
that had come over a countenance habitually 
open and manly, even when grave and stern, 
alarmed and startled Le Noy. “ Pooh, my 
friend!” he said, rather falteringly, “you are 
too excited now to think justly. Go home and 
kiss your children. Never do any thing that 
may make them shrink from their father. And 
as to Lebeau, try and forget him. He says he 
shall disappear from Paris. I believe him. It 
is clear to me that the man is not what he seem- 
ed to us. No man of sixty could by so easy a 
sleight of hand have brought that giant Pole to 
his knee. If Lebeau re-appear, it will be in some 
other form. Did you notice that in the moment- 
ary struggle his flaxen wig got disturbed, and be- 
neath it I saw a dark curl? I suspect that the 
man is not only younger .than he seemed, but of 
higher rank — a conspirator against one throne, 
)>erhaps, in order to be minister under another. 
There are such men.” 

Before Monnier, who seemed struck by these 
conjectures, collected his thoughts to answer, a 
tall man in the dress of a sous-lieutenant stopped 
under a dim gas-lamp, and catching sight of the 
artisan’s face, seized him by the hand, exclaim- 
ing, “ Armand, mon ft ere ! well met ; strange 
times, eh ? Come and discuss them at the Cafe 
de Lyon yonder over a bowl of punch. I’ll stand 
treat.” 

“Agreed, dear Charles.” 

“And if this monsieur is a friend of yours, 
perhaps he will join us.” 

“ You are too obliging, monsieur,” answered 
Le Noy, not ill pleased to get rid of his excited 
companion; “but it has been a busy day with 
me, and I am only fit for bed. Be abstinent of 
the punch, Armand. You are feverish already. 
Good-night, messieurs.” 

The Caf^ de Lyon^ in vogue among the Na- 
tional Guard of the quartier^ was but a few yards 
off, and the brothers turned toward it arm in 
arm. “Who is the friend?” asked Charles; 
“I don’t remember to have seen him with thee 
before. ” 

‘ ‘ He belongs to the medical craft — a good pa- 
triot and a kind man — attends the poor gratui- 
tously. Yes, Charles, these are strange times ; 
what dost thou think will come of them ?” 

They had now entered the cafe; and Charles 
had ordered the punch and seated himself at a 


vacant table before he replied. “What will 
come of these times ? I will tell thee. Nation- 
al deliverence and regeneration through the as- 
cendency of the National Guard.” 

“Eh? I don’t take,” said Armand, bewil- 
dered. 

“ Probably not, ’’answered Charles, with an air 
of compassionate conceit; “thou art a dream- 
er, but I am a politician.” He tapped his fore- 
head significantly. “ At this custom-house ideas 
are examined before they are passed.” 

Armand gazed at his brother wistfully, and 
with a deference he rarely manifested toward any 
one who disputed his own claims to superior in- 
telligence. Charles was a few years older than 
Monnier ; he w'as of lai'ger build ; he had shag- 
gy, lowering eyebrows, along obstinate upper lip, 
the face of a man who was accustomed to lay 
down the law. Inordinate self-esteem often gives 
that character to a physiognomy otherwise com- 
monplace. Charles passed for a deep thinker in 
his own set, which was a very ditferent set from 
Armand’s — not among w'orkmen, but small shop- 
keepers. He had risen in life to a grade beyond 
Armand’s ; he had always looked to the main 
chance ; married the widow of a hosier and glover 
much older than himself, and in her right was a 
very respectable tradesman, comfortably w'ell otf ; 
a Liberal, of course, but a Liberal bourgeois, 
equally against those above him and those below. 
Needless to add that he had no sympathy with 
his brother’s socialistic opinions. Still he loved 
that brother as well as he could love any one ex- 
cept himself. And Armand, who was very af- 
fectionate, and with whom family ties were very 
strong, returned that love w’ith ample interest; 
and though so fiercely at war with the class to 
which Charles belonged, was secretly proud of 
having a brother who was of that class. So in 
England I have known the most violent antag- 
onist of the landed aristocracy — himself a cob- 
bler — who interrupts a discourse on the crimes 
of the aristocracy by saying, “ Though I myself 
descend from a county family.” 

In an evil day Charles Monnier, enrolled in the 
National Guard, had received promotion in that 
patriotic corps. From that date he began to neg- 
lect his shop, to criticise military matters, and 
to think that if merit had fair play he should be 
a Cincinnatus or a Washington — he had not de- 
cided which. 

“Yes,” resumed Charles, ladling out the 
punch, “thou hast wit enough to perceive that 
our generals are imbeciles or traitors ; that gredin 
Bonaparte has sold the army for ten millions of 
francs to Bismarck, and I have no doubt that 
WimpfFen has his share of the bargain. M ‘Ma- 
hon was wounded conveniently, and has his own 
terms for it. The regular army is nowhere. 
Thou wilt see — thou wilt see — they will not stop 
the march of the Prussians. Trochu will be 
obliged to come to the National Guard. Then 
we shall say, ‘General, give us our terms, and 
go to sleep.’ I shall be summoned to the coun- 
cil of war. I have my plan. I explain it — ’tis 
accepted — it succeeds. I am placed in supreme 
command — the Prussians are chased back to their 
sour-krout. And I — well — I don't like to boast, 
but thou’lt see — thou’lt see — what will happen.” 

“And thy plan, Charles — thou hast formed it 
already ?” 

‘ ‘ Ay, ay — the really military genius is prompt, 


THE PARISIANS. 


193 


mon petit Armand — a flash of the brain. Hark 
ye! Let the Vandals come to Paris and invest 
it. Whatever their numbers on paper, I don’t 
care a button ; they can only have a few thou- 
sands at any given point in the vast circumfer- 
ence of the capital. Any fool must grant that — 
thou must grant it, eh ?” 

“ It seems just.” 

“Of course. Well, then, we proceed by sor- 
ties of 200,000 men, repeated every other day, 
and in twelve days the Prussians are in full 
flight.* The country rises on their flight — tliey 
are cut to pieces. I depose Trochu — the Na- 
tional Guard elects the savior of France. I 
have a place in my eye for thee. Thou art su- 
perb as a decorator — thou shalt be Minister des 
Beaux Arts. But keep clear of the canaille. 
No more strikes then — thou wilt be an employer 
— respect thy future order.” 

Armand smiled mournfully. Though of in- 
tellect which, had it been disciplined, was far 
superior to his brother’s, it was so estranged 
from practical opinions, so warped, so heated, 
so flawed and cracked in parts, that he did not 
see the ridicule of Charles’s braggadocio. Charles 
had succeeded in life, Armand had failed ; and 
Armand believed in the worldly wisdom of the 
elder born. But he was far too sincere for any 
bribe to tempt him to forsake his creed and be- 
tray his opinions. And he knew that it must be 
a very different revolution from that which his 
brother contemplated that could allow him to 
marry another man’s wife, and his “order” to 
confiscate other people’s property. 

“ Don’t talk of strikes, Charles. What is done 
is done. I was led into heading a strike, not on 
my own account, for I was well paid and well off, 
but for the sake of my fellow-workmen. I may 
regret now what I did, for the sake of Marie and 
the little ones. But it is an affair of honor, and 
I can not withdraw from the cause till my order, 
as thou nainest my class, has its rights.” 

“ Bah ! thou wilt think better of it when thou 
art an employer. Thou hast suffered enough 
already. Remember that I warned thee against 
that old fellow in spectacles whom I met once at 
thy house. I told thee he would lead thee into 
mischief, and then leave thee to get out of it. I 
saw through him. I haA'e a head! Fa.'” 

“Thou wert a true prophet — he has duped 
me. But in moving me he has set others in 
movement; and I suspect he will find he has 
duped himself. Time will show.” 

Here the brothers were joined by some loun- 
gers belonging to the National Guard. The talk 
became general, the potations large. Toward 
daybreak Armand reeled home, drunk for the 
first time in his life. He was one of those whom 
drink makes violent. Marie had been sitting up 
for him, alarmed at his lengthened absence. But 
when she would have thrown herself on his breast, 
her pale face and her passionate sobs enraged 


* Charles Monnier seems to have indiscreetly blabbed 
out his “ idea,” for it was plagiarized afterward at a 
meeting of the National Guard in the Salle de la 
Bourse by Citizen Rochebrune (slain 19th January, 
1871, in the affair of Montretout). The plan, which he 
developed nearly in the same words as Charles Mon- 
nier, was received with lively applause ; and at the 
close of his speech it was proposed to name at once 
Citizen Rochebrune General of the National Guard, 
an honor which, unhappily for his country, the citizen 
had the modesty to decline. 


him. He flung her aside roughly. From that 
night the man’s nature was changed. If, as a 
physiognomist has said, each man has in him a 
portion of the wild beast, which is suppressed by 
mild civilizing circumstances, and comes upper- 
most when self-control is lost, the nature of many 
an honest workman, humane and tender-hearted 
as the best of us, commenced a change into the 
wild beast, that raged through the civil war of 
the Communists, on the day when half a dozen 
Incapables, with no more claim to represent the 
people of Paris than half a dozen monkeys would 
have, were allowed to elect themselves to supreme 
power, and in the very fact of that election re- 
leased all the elements of passion, and destroyed 
all the bulwarks of order. 


CHAPTER X. 

No man perhaps had more earnestly sought 
and more passionately striven for the fall of the 
empire than Victor de Mauleon, and perhaps 
no man was more dissatisfied and disappointed 
by the immediate consequences of that fall. In 
first conspiring against the empire, he had natu- 
rally enough, in common with all the more in- 
telligent enemies of the dynasty, presumed that 
its fate would be worked out by the normal ef- 
fect of civil causes — the alienation of the edu- 
cated classes, the discontent of the artisans, the 
eloquence of the press and of popular meetings, 
strengthened in proportion as the Emperor had 
been compelled to relax the former checks upon 
the license of either. And De Mauleon had no 
less naturally concluded that there would be time 
given for the preparation of a legitimate and ra- 
tional form of government to succeed that which 
was destroyed. For, as has been hinted or im- 
plied, this remarkable man was not merely an in- 
stigator of revolution through the secret coun- 
cil, and the turbulent agencies set in movement 
through the lower strata of society — he was also 
in confidential communication with men emi- 
nent for wealth, station, and political repute, 
from whom he obtained the funds necessary for 
the darker purposes of conspiracy, into the elabo- 
ration of which they did not inquire; and these 
men, though belonging like himself to the Liber- 
al party, were no hot-blooded democrats. Most 
of them were in favor of constitutional monarchy ; 
all of them for forms of government very dif- 
ferent from any republic in which socialists or 
communists could find themselves uppermost. 
Among these politicians were persons ambitious 
and able, who in scheming for the fall of the 
empire had been prepared to undertake the task 
of conducting to ends compatible with modern 
civilization the revolution they were willing to 
allow a mob at Paris to commence. The open- 
ing of the war necessarily suspended their de- 
signs. How completely the events of the 4th 
September mocked the calculations of their ablest 
minds, and paralyzed the action of their most 
energetic spirits, will appear in the conversation 
I am about to record. It takes place between 
Victor de Mauleon and the personage to whom 
he had addressed the letter written on the night 
before the interview with Louvier, in which Vic- 
tor had announced his intention of re-appearing 
in Paris in his proper name and rank. I shall 


194 


THE PARISIANS. 


designate this correspondent as vaguely as possi- 
ble; let me call him the Incognito. He may 
yet play so considerable a part in the history of 
France as a potent representative of the political 
philosophy of De Tocqueville — that is, of liberal 
principles incompatible with the absolute power 
either of a sovereign or a populace, and resolute- 
ly opposed to experiments on the foundations of 
civilized society — that it would be unfair to him- 
self and his partisans if, in a work like this, a word 
were said that could lead malignant conjecture to 
his identity with any special chief of the opinions 
of which I here present him only as a type. 

The Incognito, entering Victor’s apartment: 

“My dear friend, even if I had not received 
your telegram, I should have hastened hither on 
the news of this astounding revolution. It is 
only in Paris that such a tragedy could be fol- 
lowed by such a farce. You were on the spot — 
a spectator. Explain it if you can.” 

De Mauleon. “ I was more than a spectator ; 
I was an actor. Hiss me — I deseiwe it. When 
the terrible news from Sedan reached Paris, in 
the midst of the general stun and bewilderment 
I noticed a hesitating timidity among all those 
who had wares in their shops and a good coat on 
their backs. They feared that to proclaim the 
empire defunct would be to install the Red Re- 
public with all its paroxysms of impulsive rage 
and all its theories of wholesale confiscation. 
But since it was impossible for the object we 
had in view to let slip the occasion of deposing 
the dynasty which stood in its way, it was neces- 
sary to lose no time in using the revolutionary 
part of the populace for that purpose. I assist- 
ed in doing so ;• my excuse is this : that in a time 
of crisis a man of action must go straight to his 
immediate object, and in so doing employ the 
instruments at his command. I made, however, 
one error in judgment which admits of no ex- 
cuse. I relied on all I had heard, and all I had 
observed, of the character of Trochu, and I was 
deceived, in common, I believe, with all his ad- 
mirers, and three parts of the educated classes 
of Paris.” 

Incognito. ‘ ‘ I should have been equally de- 
ceived ! Trochu’s conduct is a riddle that I 
doubt if he himself can ever solve. He was 
master of the position ; he had the military force 
in his hands if he combined with Palikao, which, 
whatever the jealousies between the two, it was his 
absolute duty to do. He had a great prestige — ” 

De Mauleon. “And for the moment a still 
greater popularity. His ipse dixit could have 
determined the wavering and confused spirits of 
the population. I was prepared for his abandon- 
ment of the Emperor — even of the Empress and 
the Regency. But how could I imagine that he, 
the man of moderate politics, of Orleanistic lean- 
ings, the clever writer, the fine talker, the chiv- 
alrous soldier, the religious Breton, could aban- 
don every thing that was legal, every thing that 
could save France against the enemy, and Paris 
against civil discord ; that he would connive at 
the annihilation of the Senate, of the popular 
Assembly, of eveiy form of government that 
could be recognized as legitimate at home or 
abroad, accept service under men whose doc- 
trines were opposed to all his antecedents, all 
his professed opinions, and inaugurate a chaos 
under the name of a republic ! ” 

Incognito. “How, indeed! How suppose 


that the National Assembly, just elected by a 
majority of seven millions and half, could be 
hurried into a conjuring box, and re-appear as 
the travesty of a Venetian oligarchy, composed 
of half a dozen of its most unpopular members ! 
The sole excuse for Trochu is that he deemed 
all other considerations insignificant compared 
with the defense of Paris, and the united action 
of the nation against the invaders. But if that 
were his honest desire in siding with this mon- 
strous usurpation of power, he did every thing 
by which the desire could be frustrated. Had 
there been any provisional body composed of 
men known and esteemed, elected by the Cham- 
bers, supported by Trochu and the troops at his 
back, there would have been a rallying-point for 
the patriotism of the provinces ; and in the wise 
suspense of any constitution to succeed that gov- 
ernment until the enemy were chased from the 
field, all partisans — Imperialists, Legitimists, Or- 
leanists. Republicans — would have equally ad- 
journed their diflPerences. But a democratic 
republic, , proclaimed by a Parisian mob for a 
nation in which sincere democratic Republicans 
are a handful, in contempt of an Assembly chos- 
en by the country at large, headed by men in 
whom the provinces have no trust, and for whom 
their ovm representatives are violently cashiered 
— can you conceive such a combination of wet 
blankets supplied by the irony of fate for the ex- 
tinction of every spark of ardor in the popula- 
tion from which armies are to be gathered in 
haste, at the beck of usurpers they distrust and 
despise ? Paris has excelled itself in folly. Hun- 
gering for peace, it proclaims a government which 
has no legal power to treat for it. Shrieking out 
for allies among the monarchies, it annihilates 
the hope of obtaining them ; its sole chance of 
escape from siege, famine, and bombardment is 
in the immediate and impassioned sympathy of 
the provinces ; and it revives all the grudges 
which the provinces have long sullenly felt against 
the domineering pretensions of the capital, and 
invokes the rural populations, which comprise the 
pith and sinew of armies, in the name of men 
whom I verily believe they detest still more than 
they do the Prussians. Victor, it is enough to 
make one despair of his country! All beyond 
the hour seems anarchy and ruin.” 

‘ ‘ Not so ! ” exclaimed De Mauleon. “ Every\ 
thing comes to him who knows how to wait, t 
The empire is destroyed; the usurpation that 
follows it has no roots. It will but serve to ex- 
pedite the establishment of such a condition as 
we have meditated and planned — a constitution 
adapted to our age and our people, not based 
wholly on untried experiments, taking the best 
from nations that do not allow Freedom and Or- 
der to be the sport of any popular breeze. From 
the American republic we must borrow the only 
safeguards against the fickleness of the universal 
suffrage which, though it was madness to concede 
in any ancient community, once conceded can 
not be safely abolished — viz., the salutary law that 
no article of the Constitution once settled can 
be altered without the consent of two-thirds of 
the legislative body. By this law we insure per- 
manence, and that concomitant love for institu- 
tions which is engendered by time and custom. 
Secondly, the formation of a Senate on such prin- 
ciples as may secure to it in all times of danger 
a confidence and respect which counteract in 


THE PARISIANS. 


195 


public opinion the rashness and heat of the pop- 
ular Assembly. On what principles that Senate 
should be formed, with what functions invested, 
what share of the executive — especially in for- 
eign affairs, declarations of war, or treaties of 
peace — should be accorded to it, will no doubt 
need the most deliberate care of the ablest minds. 
But a Senate I thus sketch has alone rescued 
America from the rashness of counsel incident to 
a democratic Chamber ; and it is still more es- 
sential to France, with still more favorable ele- 
ments for its creation. From England we must 
borrow the great principle that has alone saved 
her from revolution — that the head of the state 
can do no wrong. He leads no armies, he pre- 
sides over no Cabinet. All responsibility rests 
with his advisers ; and where we upset a dynasty, 
England changes an administration. Whether 
the head of the state should have the title of 
sovereign or president, whether he be hereditary 
or elected, is a question of minor importance im- 
possible now to determine, but I heartily concur 
with you that hereditary, monarchy is infinitely 
better adapted to the habits of Frenchmen, to 
their love of show and of honors — and infinitely 
more preservative from all the dangers which 
result from constant elections to such a dignity, 
with parties so heated, and pretenders to the rank 
so numerous — than any system by which a popu- 
lar demagogue or a successful general may have 
power to destroy the institutions he is elected to 
guard. On these fundamental doctrines for the 
regeneration of France I think we are agreed. 
And I believe when the moment arrives to pro- 
mulgate them, through an expounder of weight 
like yourself, they will rapidly commend them- 
selves to the intellect of France. For they be- 
long to common-sense ; and in the ultimate prev- 
alence of common-sense I have a faith which I 
refuse to mediaevalists who would restore the right 
divine ; and still more to fanatical quacks, who 
imagine that the worship of the Deity, the ties 
of family, and the rights of property are errors 
at variance with the progress of society. Qui 
vivera, verra.'' 

Incognito. “ In the outlines of the policy you 
so ably enunciate I heartily concur. But if 
France is, I will not say to be regenerated, but 
to have fair play among the nations of Europe, 
I add one or two items to the programme. 
France must be saved from Paris not by subter- 
ranean barracks and trains, the impotence of 
which we see to-day with a general in command 
of the military force, but by conceding to France 
its proportionate share of the pow’er now mo- 
nopolized by Paris. All this system of central- 
ization, equally tyrannical and corrupt, must be 
eradicated. Talk of examples from America, of 
which I know' little — from England, of wdiich I 
know much — what can we more advantageously 
borrow from England than that diffusion of all 
her moral and social power which forbids the 
congestion of blood in one vital part ? Decen- 
tralize ! decentralize ! decentralize ! will be my 
incessant cry, if ever the time comes when my 
cry will be heard, France can never be a genu- 
ine France until Paris has no more influence over 
the destinies of France than London has over 
those of England. But on this theme I could go 
on till midnight. Now' to the immediate point : 
what do you advise me to do in this crisis, and 
what do you propose to do yourself?” 


De Mauleon put his hand to his brow, and re- 
mained a few moments silent and thoughtful. 
At last he looked up with that decided expres- 
sion of face w'hich was not the least among his 
many attributes for influence over those with 
whom he came into contact. 

“For you, on whom so much of the future 
depends, my advice is brief — have nothing to do 
with the present. All who join this present 
mockery of a government will share the fall that 
attends it — a fall from which one or two of their 
body may possibly recover by casting blame on 
their confreres — you never could. But it is not 
for you to oppose that government with an ene- 
my on its march to Paris. You are not a soldier ; 
military command is not in your role. The is- 
sue of events is uncertain ; but whatever it be, 
the men in power can not conduct a prosperous 
war nor obtain an honorable peace. Hereafter 
you may be the Deus ex macfiind. No person- 
age of that rank and w'ith that mission appears 
till the end of the play : w'e are only in the first 
act. Leave Paris at once, and abstain from all 
action.” 

Incognito (dejectedly'). “I can not deny the 
soundness of your advice, though in accepting it 
I feel unutterably saddened. Still you, the calm- 
est and shrewdest observer among my friends, 
think there is cause for hope, not despair. Vic- 
tor, I have more than most men to make life 
pleasant, but I would lay dowm life at this mo- 
ment with you. You know me well enough to 
be sure that I utter no melodramatic fiction 
when I say that I love ray country as a young 
man loves the ideal of his dreams — with my 
whole mind and heart and soul ! — and the thought 
that I can not now aid her in the hour of her 
mortal trial is — is — ” 

The man’s voice broke down, and he turned 
aside, veiling his face with a hand that trembled. 

De Mauleon. “Courage! — patience! All 
Frenchmen have the first ; set them an example 
they much need in the second. I, too, love my 
country, though I owe to it little enough, Heaven 
knows. I suppose love of country is inherent in 
all who are not Internationalists. They profess 
only to love humanity, by which, if they mean 
any thing practical, they mean a rise in wages. ” 

Incognito (rousing himself and with a half 
smile). “Always cynical, Victor — always belying 
yourself. But now that you have advised my 
course, what will be your own ? Accompany me, 
and wait for better times.” 

“ No, noble friend ; our positions are differ- 
ent. Yours is made — mine yet to make. But 
for this war I think I could have secured a seat 
in the Chamber. As I wrote you, I found that 
my kinsfolk were of much influence in their de- 
partment, and that my restitution to my social 
grade, and the repute I had made as an Orlean- 
ist, inclined them to forget my youthful errors 
and to assist my career. But the Chamber ceases 
to exist. My journal I shall drop. I can not 
support the government ; it is not a moment to 
oppose it. My prudent course is silence.” 

Incognito. “ But is not your journal essential 
to your support ?” 

De Mauleon. “Fortunately not. Its prof- 
its enabled me to lay by for the rainy day that 
has come ; and having re-imbursed you and all 
friends the sums necessary to start it, I stand 
clear of all debt, and for my slender wants a 


196 


THE PAEISIANS. 


rich mnn. If I continued the jounial I should 
be beggared, for there would be no readers to 
Common-Sense in this interval of lunacy. Never- 
theless, during this interval I trust to other ways 
for winning a name that will open my rightful 
path of ambition whenever we again have a legis- 
lature in which Common-Sense can be heard.” 

Incognito. “But how win that name, si- 
lenced as a writer ?” 

De Madleon. “ You forget that I have fought 
in Algeria. In a few days Paris will be in a state 
of siege; and then — and then,” he added, and 
very quietly dilated on the renown of a patriot 
or the grave of a soldier. 

“I envy you the chance of either,” said the 
Incognito ; and after a few more brief words he 
departed, his hat drawn over his brows, and en- 
tering a hired carriage which he had left at the 
comer of the quiet street, was consigned to the 
Station du , just in time for the next train. 


CHAPTER XI. 

Victor dressed and went out. The streets 
were crowded. Workmen were every where 
employed in the childish operation of removing 
all insignia, and obliterating all names, that show- 
ed where an empire had existed. One greasy 
citizen, mounted on a ladder, was effacing the 
words “ Boulevard Haussman,” and substituting 
for Haussman “Victor Hugo.” 

Suddenly De Mauleon came on a group of 
blouses, interspersed with women holding babies 
and ragged boys holding stones, collected round 
a well-dressed slender man, at whom they were 
hooting and gesticulating, with menaces of do- 
ing something much worse. By an easy effort 
of his strong frame the Vicomte pushed his way 
through the tormentors, and gave his arm to 
their intended victim. 

“Monsieur, allow me to walk home with you.” 

Tlierewith the shrieks and shouts and ges- 
ticulations increased. “Another impertinent! 
Another traitor! Drown him! Drown them 
both ! To the Seine ! To the Seine ! ” A burly 
fellow rushed forward, and the rest made a plun- 
ging push. The outstretched arm of De Mauleon 
kept the ringleader at bay. ‘ ‘ Mes enfans^ ” cried 
Victor, with a calm clear voice, “1 am not an 
Imperialist. Many of you have read the articles 
signed Pierre Firmin, written against the tyrant 
Bonaparte when he was at the height of his pow- 
er. 1 am Pierre Firmin — make way for me.” 
Probably not one in the crowd had ever read a 
word written by Pierre Firaiin, nor even heard 
of the name. But they did not like to own ig- 
norance; and that burly fellow did not like to 
encounter that arm of iron which touched his 
throat. So he cried out, “Oh! if you are the 
great Piei re Firmin, that alters the case. Make 
way for the patriot Pierre!” “ But,” shrieked 
a virago, thrusting her baby into De Mauleon ’s 
face, “ the other is the Imperialist, the capital- 
ist, the vile Duplessis. At least we will have 
him.” De Mauleon suddenly snatched the baby 
from her, and said, with imperturbable good tem- 
per, “Exchange of prisoners ! I resign the man, 
and I keep the baby.” 

No one who does not know the humors of a 
Parisian mob can comprehend the suddenness 


of popular change, or the magical mastery over 
crowds, which is effected by quiet courage and a 
ready joke. The group was appeased at once. 
Even the virago laughed ; and when De Mau- 
leon restored the infant to her arms, with a gold 
piece thrust into its tiny clasp, she eyed the gold, 
and cried, “God bless you, citizen!” The two 
gentlemen made their way safely now. 

“ M. de Mauleon,” said Duplessis, “I know 
not how to thank you. Without your season- 
able aid I should have been in great danger of 
life; and — would you believe it? — the woman 
who denounced and set the mob on me was one 
of the objects of a charity v/hich I weekly dis- 
pense to the poor.” 

“ Of course I believe that. At the Red clubs 
no crime is more denounced than that of charity. 

It is the ‘ fraud against Egalite' — a vile trick of 
the capitalist to save to himself the millions he 
ought to share with all by giving a soti to one. 
Meanwhile take my advice, M. Duplessis, and 
quit Paris with your young daughter. This is 
no place for rich Imperialists at present.” 

“ I perceived that befbre to-day’s adventure. I 
distrust the looks of my very servants, and shall 
depart with Valerie this evening for Bretagne.” 

“ Ah ! I heard from Louvier that you propose 
to pay off his mortgage on Rochebriant, and 
make yourself sole proprietor of my young kins- 
man’s property.” 

“I trust you only believe half what you hear. 

I mean to save Rochebriant from Louvier, and 
consign it, free of charge, to your kinsman, as 
the dot of his bride, my daughter.” 

“I rejoice to learn such good news for the 
head of my house. But Alain himself — is he 
not with the prisoners of war?” 

“ No, thank Heaven. He w’ent forth an offi- 
cer of a regiment of Parisian Mobiles — went full ^ 
of sanguine confidence ; he came back with his 
regiment in mournful despondency. The undis- 
cipline of his. regiment, of the Parisian Mobiles 
generally, appears incredible. Their insolent dis- 
obedience to their officers, their ribald scoffs at 
their general — oh, it is sickening to speak of it ! 
Alain distinguished himself by repressing a mu- 
tiny, and is honored by a signal compliment from 
the commander in a letter of recommendation to 
Palikao. But Palikao is nobody now. Alain 
has already been sent into Bretagne, commission- 
ed to assist in organizing a corps of Mobiles in 
his neighborhood. Trochu, as you know, is a 
Breton. Alain is confident of the good conduct 
of the Bretons. What will Louvier do ? He is 
an arch Republican. Is he pleased now he has 
got what he wanted ?” 

“I suppose he is pleased, for he is terribly 
frightened. Fright is one of the great enjoy- 
ments of a Parisian. Good-day. Your path to 
your hotel is clear now. Remember me kindly 
to Alain.” 

De Mauleon continued his way through streets 
sometimes deserted, sometimes thronged. At 
the commencement of the Rue de Florentin he 
encountered the brothers Vandemar walking arm 
in arm. 

“ Ha,De Mauleon !” cried Enguerrand ; “what 
is the last minute’s news ?” 

“ I can’t guess. Nobody knows at Paris how 
soon one folly swallows up another. Saturn here 
is always devouring one or other of his children.” 

“They say that Vinoy, after a most masterly 



PE MAin-EON SUDDENLY SNATCHED THE DAHY FEOM IIEB, AND SAID, WITH IMPERTURISABLE GOOD TEMPER, “EX- 
CHANGE OF PRISONERS ! I RESIGN THE MAN, AND I KEEP THE BABY." 




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THE PARISIANS. 


197 


retreat, is almost at our gates with eighty thou- 
sand men.” 

“And this day twelvemonth we may know 
what he does with them.” 

Here Raoul, who seemed absorbed in gloomy 
reflections, halted before the hotel in which the 
Comtesse di Rimini lodged, and with a nod to 
his brother, and a polite, if not cordial, salutation 
to Victor, entered the porte cochere. 

“ Your brother seems out of spirits — a pleas- 
ing contrast to the uproarious mirth with which 
Parisians welcome the advance of calamity.” 

“ Raoul, as you know, is deeply religious. 
He regards the defeat we have sustained, and 
the peril that threatens us, as the beginning of a 
divine chastisement, justly incurred by our sins 
— I mean the sins of Paris. lu vain my father 
reminds him of Voltaire s story, in which the 
ship goes down with a fripon on board. In or- 
der to punish the fripon the honest folks are 
drowned. ” 

“ Is your father going to remain on board the 
ship, and share the fate of the other honest folks ?” 

“Pas si bete. He is off to Dieppe for sea- 
bathing. He says that Paris has grown so dirty 
since the 4th September that it is only fit for 
the feet of the Unwashed. He wished my moth- 
er to accompany him; but she replies, ‘No; 
there are already too many wounded not to need 
plenty of nurses.’ She is assisting to inaugurate 
a society of ladies in aid of the Soeurs de Char- 
it€. Like Raoul, she is devout, but she has not 
his superstitions. Still his superstitions are the 
natural reaction of a singularly earnest and pure 
nature from the frivolity and corruption which, 
when kneaded well up together with a slice of 
sarcasm, Paris calls philosophy.” 

“And what, my dear Enguerrand, do you 
propose to do ?” 

“That depends on whether we are really be- 
sieged. If so, of course I become a soldier.” 

“I hope not a National Guard ?” 

“ I care not in what name I fight, so that I 
fight for France. ” 

As Enguerrand said these simple words his 
whole countenance seemed changed. The crest 
rose ; the eyes sparkled ; the fair and delicate 
beauty which had made him the darling of wom- 
en^ — the joyous sweetness of expression and dain- 
ty grace of high-breeding which made him the 
most popular companion to men — were exalted 
in a masculine nobleness of aspect, from which a 
painter might have taken hints for a study of the 
young Achilles separated forever from effemi- 
nate companionship at the sight of the weapons 
of war. De Mauleon gazed on him admiringly. 
We have seen that he shared the sentiments ut- 
tered — had resolved on the same course of ac- 
tion. But it was with the tempered warmth of 
a man who seeks to divest his thoughts and his 
purpose of the ardor of romance, and who, in 
serving his country, calculates on the gains to his 
own ambition. Nevertheless he admired in En- 
guerrand the image of his own impulsive and 
fiery youth. 

“And you, I presume,” resumed Enguerrand, 
“will fight too, but rather with pen than with 
sword. ” 

“Pens will now only be dipped in red ink, 
and common-sense never writes in that color; 
as for the sword, I have passed the age of forty- 
five, at which military service halts. But if 


some experience in active service, some knowl- 
edge of the art by which soldiers are disciplined 
and led, will be deemed sufficient title to a post 
of command, however modest the grade be, I 
shall not be wanting among the defenders of 
Paris.” 

“My brave dear Vicomte, if you are past the 
age to serve, you are in the ripest age to com- 
mand ; and with the testimonials and the cross 
you won in Algeria, your application for employ- 
ment will be received with gratitude by any gen- 
eral so able as Trochu.” 

“I don’t know whether I shall apply to Trochu. 
I would rather be elected to command even by 
the Mobiles or the National Guard, of whom I 
have just spoken disparagingly ; and no doubt 
both corps will soon claim and win the right to 
choose their officers. But if elected, no matter 
by whom, I shall make a preliminary condition : 
the men under me shall train and drill and 
obey — soldiers of a very different kind from the 
youthful Pekins nourished on absinthe and self- 
conceit, and applauding that Bombastes Furioso, 
M. Hugo, when he assures the enemy that Paris 
will draw an idea ‘from its scabbard. But here 
comes Savarin. Bonjour, my dear poet.” 

“ Don’t say good day. An evil day for jour- 
nalists and writers who do not out-Herod Blan- 
qui and Pyat. I know not how I shall get bread- 
and-cheese. My poor suburban villa is to be 
pulled down by way of securing Paris ; my jour- 
nal will be suppressed by way of establishing the 
liberty of the press. It ventured to suggest that 
the people of France should have some choice in 
the form of their government.” 

“That was very indiscreet, my poor Savarin,” 
said Victor ; “I wonder your printing-office has 
not been pulled down. We are now at the mo- 
ment when wise men hold their tongues. ” 

“ Perhaps so, M. de Mauleon. It might have 
been wiser for all of us, you as well as myself, if 
we had not allowed our tongues to be so free be- 
fore this moment arrived. We live to learn ; 
and if we ever have what may be called a pass- 
able government again, in which we may say 
pretty much what we like, there is one thing I 
will not do — I will not undermine that govern- 
ment without seeing a very clear way to the gov- 
ernment that is to follow it. What say you, 
Pierre Firmin ?” 

“Frankly, I say that I deseiwe your rebuke,” 
answered De Mauleon, thoughtfully. “But of 
course you are going to take or send Madame 
Savarin out of Paris ?” 

“ Certainly. We have made a very pleasant 
party for our hegira this evening — among others 
the Morleys. Morley is terribly disgusted. A 
Red Republican slapped him on the shoulder and 
said, ‘ American, we have a republic as well as 
you.’ ‘Pretty much you know about republics,’ 
growled Morley ; ‘ a French republic is as much 
like ours as a baboon is. like a man. ’ On which 
the Red roused the mob, who dragged the Amer- 
ican off to the nearest station of the National 
Guard, where he was accused of being a Prus- 
sian spy. With some difficulty, and lots of brag 
about the sanctity of the Stars and Stripes, he 
escaped with a reprimand, and caution how to 
behave himself in future. So he quits a city in 
which there no longer exists freedom of speech. 
My wife hoped to induce Mademoiselle Cicogna 
to accompany us ; I grieve to say she refuses. 


198 


THE PARISIANS. 


You know she is engaged in marriage to Gustave 
Rameau ; and his mother dreads the effect that 
these Red clubs and his own vanity may have 
upon liis excitable temperament if the influence 
of Mademoiselle Cicogna be withdrawn.” 

“ How could a creature so exquisite as Isaura 
Cicogna ever find fascination in Gustave Ra- 
meau!” exclaimed Enguerrand. 

“ A woman like her,” answered De Mauleon, 
“always finds a fascination in self-sacrifice.” 

“I think you divine the truth,” said Savarin, 
rather mournfully. “ But I must bid you good- 
by. May we live to shake hands r^unis sous des 
vieilleurs auspices. ” 

Here Savarin hurried off, and the other two 
men strolled into the Champs Elysees, which 
were crowded with loungers, gay and careless, 
as if there had been no disaster at Sedan, no 
overthrow of an empire, no enemy on its road to 
Paris. 

In fact, the Parisians, at once the most incred- 
ulous and the most credulous of all populations, 
believed that the Prussians would never be so 
impertinent as to come in sight of the gates. 
Something would occur to stop them ! The King 
had declared he did not make war on French- 
men, but on the Emperor : the Emperor gone, the 
war was over. A democratic republic was in- 
stituted. A horrible thing in its way, it is true ; 
but how could the Pandour tyrant brave the in- 
fection of democratic doctrines among his own 
barbarian armies ? Were not placards, addressed 
to our “German brethren,” posted upon the 
walls of Paris, exhorting the Pandours to fra- 
ternize with their fellow-creatures ? Was not 
Victor Hugo going to publish “a letter to the 
German people? Had not Jules Favre gracious- 
ly offeied peace, with the assurance that France 
would not cede a stone of her fortresses — an inch 
of her territory ? She would pardon the invad- 
ers, and not march upon Berlin !” To all these, 
and many more such incontestable proofs, that 
the idea of a siege was moonshine, did Enguer- 
rand and Victor listen as they joined group after 
group of their fellow-countrymen : nor did Paris 
cease to harbor such pleasing illusions, amusing 
itself with piously laying crowns at the foot of 
the statue of Strasburg, swearing “they would 
be worthy of their Alsacian brethren,” till on the 
19th of September the last telegram was received, 
and Paris was cut off from the rest of the world 
by the iron line of the Prussian invaders. “ Tran- 
quil and terrible,” says Victor Hugo, “she awaits 
the invasion ! A volcano needs no assistance. ” 

■ — 

CHAPTER XII. 

We left Graham Vane slowly recovering from 
the attack of fever which had arrested his jour- 
ney to Berlin in quest of the Count von Rude- 
sheim. He was, however, saved the prosecution 
of that journey, and his direction turned back to 
France, by a German newspaper, which informed 
him that the King of Prussia was at Rheims, and 
that the Count von Rudesheim was among the 
eminent personages gathered there around their 
sovereign. In conversing the same day with the 
kindly doctor who attended him, Graham ascer- 
tained that this German noble held a high com- 
mand in the German armies, and bore a no less 


distinguished reputation as a wise political coun- 
selor than he had earned as a military chief. As 
soon as he was able to travel, and indeed before 
the good doctor sanctioned his departure, Gra- 
ham took his way to Rheims, uncertain, how- 
ever, whether the Count would still be found 
there. I spare the details of his journey, inter- 
esting as they were. On reaching the famous 
and, in the eyes of the Legitimists, the sacred 
city, the Englishman had no difficulty in ascer- 
taining the house, not far from the cathedral, in 
which the Count von Rudesheim had taken his 
temporary abode. Walking toward it from the 
small hotel in which he had been lucky enough to 
find a room disengaged — slowly, for he was still 
feeble — he was struck by the quiet conduct of the 
German soldiery, and, save in their appearance, 
the peaceful aspect of the streets. Indeed, there 
was an air of festive gayety about the place, as 
in an English town in which some popular regi- 
ment is quartered. The German soldiers throng- 
ed the shops, buying largely ; lounged into the 
cafes ; here and there attempted flirtations with, 
the qrisettes, who laughed at their French and 
blushed at their compliments ; and in their good- 
humored, somewhat bashful cheeriness, there was 
no trace of the insolence of conquest. 

But as Graham neared the precincts of the 
cathedral his ear caught a grave and solemn mu- 
sic, which he at first supposed to come from with- 
in the building. But as he paused and looked 
round he saw a group of the German military, 
on whose stalwart forms and fair, manly, ear- 
nest faces the setting sun cast its calm, lingering 
rays. They were chanting, in voices not loud 
but deep, Luthers majestic hymn. Nun danket 
alle Gott. The chant awed even the ragged 
beggar boys who had followed the Englishman, 
as they followed any stranger, would have fol- 
lowed King William himself, whining for alms. 
“What a type of the difference between the two 
nations !” thought Graham ; “ the Marseillaise, 
and Luther’s Hymn !” While thus meditating 
and listening, a man in a general’s uniform came 
slowly out of the cathedral, with his hands clasped 
behind his back, and his head bent slightly down- 
ward. He, too, paused on hearing the hymn ; 
then unclasped his hand and beckoned to one of 
the officers, to whom, approaching, he whispered 
a word or two, and passed on toward the Episco- 
pal palace. The hymn hushed, and the singers 
quietly dispersed. Graham divined rightly that 
the general had thought a hymn thanking the 
God of battles might wound the feelings of the 
inhabitants of the vanquished city — not, howev- 
er, that any of them were likely to understand 
the language in which the thanks were uttered. 
Graham followed the measured steps of the gen- 
eral, whose hands were again clasped behind his 
back — the musing habit of Von Moltke, as it had 
been of Napoleon the First. 

Continuing his way, the Englishman soon 
reached the house in which the Count von Rude- 
sheim was lodged, and sending in his card, was 
admitted at once through an anteroom, in which 
sat two young men, subaltern officers, apparent- 
ly employed in draughting maps, into the pres- 
ence of the Count. 

“Pardon me,” said Graham, after the first 
conventional salutation, “if I interrupt you for 
a moment or so in the midst of events so grave, 
on a matter that must seem to you very trivial.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


199 


“ Nay,” answered the Count, “ there is noth- 
ing so trivial in this world but what there will 
be some one to whom it will be important. Say 
how I can serve you.” 

“I think, M. le Comte, that you once received 
in your household, as teacher or governess, a 
French lady, Madame Marigny.” 

“ Yes, I remember her well — a very handsome 
woman. My wife and daughter took great in- 
terest in her. Slie was married out of my house.” 

“ Exactly. And to whom ?” 

“ An Italian of good birth, who was then em- 
ployed by the Austrian government in some mi- 
nor post, and subsequently promoted to a better 
one in the Italian dominion, which then belonged 
to the house of Hapsburg, after which we lost 
sight of him and his wife.” 

“An Italian ! What was his name ?” 

“Ludovico Cicogna.” 

“Cicogna!” exclaimed Graham, turning very 
pale. “Are you sure that was the name?” 

“ Certainly. He was a cadet of a very noble 
house, and disowned by relations too patriotic to 
forgive him for accepting employment under the 
Austrian government.” 

“ Can you not give me the address of the place 
in Italy to which he was transferred on leaving 
Austria?” 

“No; hut if the information be necessary to 
vou, it can be obtained easily at Milan, where 
the h^ad of the family resides, or, indeed, in Vi- 
enna, through any ministerial bureau.” 

“ Pardon me one or two questions more. Had 
Madame Marigny any children by a former hus- 
band ?” 

“ Not that I know of : I never heard so. Sign- 
or Cicogna was a widower, and had, if I remem- 
ber right, children by his first wife, who was also 
a Frenchwoman. Before he obtained office in 
Austria he resided, I believe, in France. I do 
not remember how many children he had by his 
first wife. I never saw them. Our acquaint- 
ance began at the baths of Toplitz, where he saw 
and fell violently in love with Madame Marigny. 
After their marriage they went to his post, which 
was somewhere, I think, in the Tyrol. We saw 
no more of them ; but my wife and daughter 
kept up a correspondence with the Signora Ci- 
cogna for a short time. It ceased altogether 
when she removed into Italy.” 

“You do not even know if the signora is still 
living?” 

“No.” 

“Her husband, I am told, is dead.” 

“Indeed! I am concerned to hear it. A 
good-looking, lively, clever man. I fear he must 
have lost all income when the Austrian domin- 
ions passed to the house of Savoy.” 

“Many thanks for your information. I can 
detain you no longer,” said Graham, rising. 

“Nay, I am not very busy at this moment; 
but I fear we Germans have plenty of work on 
our hands.” 

“ I had hoped that, now the French Emperor, 
against whom your King made war, was set aside, 
his Prussian majesty would make peace with the 
French people.” 

“Most willingly would he do so if the French 
people would let him. But it must be through 
a French government legally chosen by the peo- 
ple. And they have chosen none ! A mob at 
Paris sets up a provisional administration, that 


commences by declaring that it will not give up 
‘ an inch of its territory nor a stone of its for- 
tresses.’ No terms of .peace can be made with 
such men holding such talk.” After a few words 
more over the state of public affairs — in which 
Graham expressed the English side of affairs, 
which was all for generosity to the vanquished, 
and the Count argued much more ably on the 
German, which was all for security against the 
aggressions of a people that would not admit it- 
self to be vanquished — the short interview closed. 

As Graham at night pursued his journey to 
Vienna, there came into his mind Isaura’s song 
of the Ne.apolitan fisherman. Had he, too, been 
blind to the image on the rock ? Was it possible 
that all the while he had been resisting the im- 
pulse of his heart, until the discharge of the mis- 
sion intrusted to him freed his choice and decid- 
ed his fortunes, the very person of whom he was 
in search had been before him, then to be forever 
won, lost to him now forever? Could Isaiira Ci- 
cogna be the child of Louise Duval by Richard 
King ? She could not have been her child by Ci- 
cogna: the dates forbade that hypothesis. Isauva 
must have been five years old when Louise mar- 
ried the Italian. 

Arrived at Milan, Graham quickly ascertained 
that the po.st to which Ludovico Cicogna had 
been removed was in Verona, and that he had 
there died eight years ago. Nothing was to be 
learned as to his family or his circumstances at 
the time of his death. The people of whose his- 
tory we know the least are the relations we re- 
fuse to acknowledge. Graham continued his 
journey to Verona. There he found on inquiry 
that the Cicognas had occupied an apartment in 
a house which stood at the outskirts of the town, 
and had been since pulled down to make way for 
some public improvements. But his closest in- 
quiries could gain him no satisfactory answers to 
the all-important questions as to Ludovico Ci- 
cogna’s family. His political alienation from the 
Italian cause, which was nowhere more ardently 
espoused than at Verona, had rendered him very 
unpopular. He visited at no Italian houses. 
Such society as he had was confined to the Austri- 
an military within the Quadrilateral or at Venice, 
to which city he made frequent excursions : was 
said to lead there a free and gay life, very displeas- 
ing to the signora, whom he left in Verona. She 
was but little seen, and faintly remembered as 
A^ery handsome and proud -looking. Yet there 
were children — a girl, and a boy several years 
younger than the girl ; but whether she was the 
child of the signora- by a former marriage, or 
whether the signora was only the child’s step- 
mother, no one could say. The usual clew in 
such doubtful matters, obtainable through serv- 
ants, Avas here missing. The Cicognas had only 
kept two servants, and both Avere Austrian sub- 
jects, Avho had long left the country — their A'ery 
names forgotten. 

Graham now called to mind the Englishman, 
Selby, for Avhom Isaura had such grateful affec- 
tion, as supplying to her the place of her father. 
This must have been the Englishman Avhora 
Louise Duval had married after Cicogna’s death. 
It would be no difficult task, surely, to ascertain 
where he had resided. Easy enough to ascertain 
all that Graham Avanted to know from Isaura 
herself, if a letter could reach her. But, as he 
! knew by the journals, Baris Avas noAv invested — 


200 


THE PARISIANS. 


cut off from all communication with the world 
beyond. Too irritable, anxious, and impatient 
to "wait for the close of the siege, though he nev- 
er suspected it could last so long as it did, he 
hastened to Venice, and there learned through 
the British consul that the late Mr. Selby was 
a learned antiquarian, an accomplished general 
scholar, a fanatico in music, a man of gentle 
temper, though reserved manners ; had at one 
time lived much at Venice : after his marriage 
with the Signora Cicogna he had taken up his 
abode near Florence. To Florence Graham now 
went. He found the villa on the skirts of Fiesole 
at which Mr. Selby had resided. The peasant 
who had officiated as gardener and share-holder 
in the profits of vines and figs was still, with his 
wife, living on the place. Both man and wife 
remembered the Inglese well ; spoke of him with 
great affection, of his vvife with great dislike. 
They said her manners were very haughty, her 
temper very violent ; that she led the Inglese a 
very unhappy life ; that there were a girl and a 
boy, both hers by a former marriage ; but when 
closely questioned whether they were sure that 
the girl was the signora’s child by the former 
husband, or whether she was not the child of that 
husband by a former wife, they could not tell ; 
they could only say that both were called by the 
same name — Cicogna ; that the boy was the sign- 
ora’s favorite — that, indeed, she seemed wrapped 
up in him ; that he died of a rapid decline a few 
months after Mr. Selby had hired the place, and 
that shortly after his death the signora left the 
place and never returned to it ; that it was little 
more than a year that she had lived with her 
husband before this final separation took place. 
The girl remained with Mr. Selby, who cherish- 
ed and loved her as his own child. Her Chris- 
tian name was Isaura, the boy’s Luigi. A few 
years later Mr. Selby left the villa and went to 
Naples, where they heard he had died. They 
could give no information as to what had be- 
come of his wife. Since the death of her boy 
that lady had become very much changed — her 
spirits quite broken, no longer violent. She 
would sit alone and weep bitterly. The only 
person out of her family she would receive was 
the priest; till the boy’s death she had never 
seen the priest, nor been known to attend divine 
service. 

“ Was the priest living?” 

‘ ‘ Oh no ; he had been dead two years. A 
most excellent man — a saint,” said the peasant’s 
wife. 

“ Good priests are like good women,” said the 
peasant, dryly ; “ there are plenty of them, but 
they are all under-grouftd.” 

On which remark the wife tried to box his 
ears. The contadino had become a freethinker 
since the accession of the house of Savoy. His 
w'ife remained a good Catholic. 

Said the peasant, as, escaping from his wife, he 
walked into the high-road with Graham, “My 
belief, Eccelenza^ is that the priest did all the 
mischief.” 

“ What mischief?” 

“Persuaded the signora to leave her husband. 
The Inglese was not a Catholic. I heard the 
priest call him a heretic. And the Padre^ who, 
though not so bad as some of his cloth, was a 
meddling bigot, thought it perhaps best for her | 
soul that it should part company with a heretic’s 1 


person. I can’t say for sure, but I think that 
was it. The Padre seemed to triumph when the 
signora was gone.” 

Graham mused. The peasant’s supposition 
was not improbable. A woman such as Louise 
Duval appeared to be — of vehement passions and 
ill-regulated mind — was just one of those who, 
in a moment of great sorrow, and estranged from 
the ordinary household ailections, feel, though 
but imperfectly, the necessity of a religion, and, 
ever in extremes, pass at once from indifferent- 
ism into superstition. 

Arrived at Naples, Graham heard little of Sel- 
by except as a literary recluse, whose only dis- 
traction from books was the operatic stage. But 
he heard much of Isaura ; of the kindness which 
Madame de Grantmesnil had shown to her, 
when left by Selby’s death alone in the world ; 
of the interest which the friendship and the 
warm eulogies of one so eminent as the great 
French writer had created for Isaura in the ar- 
tistic circles ; of the intense sensation her appear- 
ance, her voice, her universal genius, had made 
in that society, and the brilliant hopes of her sub- 
sequent career on the stage the cognoscenti had 
formed. No one knew any thing of her mother ; 
no one entertained a doubt that Isaura was by 
birth a Cicogna. Graham could not learn the 
present whereabouts of Madame de Grantmes- 
nil. She had long left Naples, and had been 
last heard of at Genoa ; was supposed to have 
returned to France a little before the war. In 
France she had no fixed residence. 

The simplest mode of ascertaining authentic 
information whether Isaura was the daughter of 
Ludovico Cicogna by his first wife — namely, by 
registration of her birth — failed him, because, 
as Von Rudesheim had said, his first wife was a 
FVenchwoman. The children had been born 
somewhere in France — no one could even guess 
where. No one had ever seen the first wife, 
who had never appeared in Italy, nor had even 
heard what was her maiden name. 

Graham, meanwhile, was not aware that Isau- 
ra was still in the besieged city, whether or not 
already married to Gustave Rameau ; so large a 
number of the women had quitted Paris before 
the siege began that he had reason to hope she 
was among them. He heard through an Ameri- 
can that the Morleys had gone to England be- 
fore the Prussian investment; perhaps Isaura 
had gone with them. He wrote to Mrs. Morley, 
inclosing his letter to the minister of the United 
States at the court of St. James, and while still 
at Naples received her answer. It was short and 
malignantly bitter. “Both myself and Madame 
Savarin, backed by Signora Yenosta, earnestly 
entreated Mademoiselle Cicogna to quit Paris, 
to accompany us to England. Her devotion to 
her affianced husband would not permit her to 
listen to us. It is only an Englishman who 
could suppose Isfiura Cicogna to be one of those 
women who do not insist on sharing the perils 
of those they love. You ask whether she was 
the daughter of Ludovico Cicogna by his former 
marriage, or of his second wife by him. I can 
not answer. I don’t even know whether Signor 
Cicogna ever had a former wife. Isaura Cicogna 
never spoke to me of her parents. Permit me 
to ask what business is it of yours now ? Is it 
I the English pride that makes you wish to learn 
i whether on both sides she is of noble family ? 


THE PARISIANS. 


201 


How can that discovery alter your relations to- 
ward the affianced bride of another ?” 

On receipt of this letter Graham quitted Na- 
ples, and shortly afterward found himself at Ver- 
sailles. He obtained permission to establish him- 
self there, though the English were by no means 
popular. Thus near to Isaura, thus sternly sep- 
arated from her, Graham awaited the close of the 
siege. Few among those at., Versailles believed 
that the Parisians would endure it much longer. 
Surely they would capitulate before the bombard- 
ment, which the Germans themselves disliked to 
contemplate as a last resource, could commence. 

In his own mind Graham was convinced that 
Isaura was the child of Richard King. It seem- 
ed to him probable that Louise Duval, unable to 
assign any real name to the daughter of the mar- 
riage she disowned — neither the name borne by 
the repudiated husband, nor her own maiden 
name — \vould, on taking her daughter to her new 
home, have induced Cicogna to give the child 
his name ; or that after Cicogna’s death she .her- 
self had so designated the girl. A dispassion- 
ate confidant, could Graham have admitted any 
confidant whatever, might have suggested the 
more equal probability that Isaura was Cico- 
gna’s daughter by his former espousal. But 
then what could have become of Richard King’s 
child ? To part with the future in his hands, 
to relinquish all the ambitious dreams which be- 
longed to it, cost Graham Vane no pang; but 
he writhed with indignant grief when he thought 
that the wealth of Richard King’s heiress was 
to pass to the hands of Gustave Rameau — that 
this was to be the end of his researches — this 
the result of the sacrifice his sense of honor im- 
posed on him. And now that there was the 
probability that he must convey to Isaura this 
large inheritance, the practical difficulty of in- 
venting some reason for such a donation, which 
he had, while at a distance, made light of, be- 
came seriously apparent. HOw could he say to 
Isaura that he had £200,000 in trust for her, 
without naming any one so devising it? Still 
more, how constitute himself her guardian, so 
as to secure it to herself, independently of her 
husband ? Perhaps Isaura was too infatuated 
with Rameau, or too romantically unselfish, to 
permit the fortune so mysteriously conveyed be- 
ing exclusively appropriated to herself. And if 
she were already married to Rameau, and if he 
were armed with the right to inquire into the 
source of this fortune, how exposed to the risks 
of disclosure would become the secret Graham 
sought to conceal! Such a secret affecting the 
memory of the sacred dead, affixing a shame on 
the scutcheon of the living, in the irreverent 
hands of a Gustave Rameau — it was too dread- 
ful to contemplate such a hazard. And yet, if 
Isaura were the missing heiress, could Graham 
Vane admit any excuse for basely withholding 
from her, for coolly retaining to himself, the 
wealth for which he was responsible ? Yet, tor- 
turing as w'ere these communings with himself, 
they were mild in their torture compared to the 
ever-growing anguish of the thought that in any 
case the only woman he had ever loved — ever 
could love — who might but for his own scruples 
and prejudices have been the partner of his life 
— was perhaps now actually the wife of another ; 
and, as such, in what terrible danger! Famine 
within the walls of the doomed city : without, the 


engines of death waiting for a signal. So near 
to her, and yet so far ! So willing to die for her, 
if for her he could not live : and with all his de- 
votion, all his intellect, all his wealth, so power- 
less! 


CHAPTER XIII. 

It is now the middle of November — a Sun- 
day. The day has been mild, and is drawing 
toward its close. The Pai-isians have been en- 
joying the sunshine. Under the leafless trees 
in the public gardens and the Champs Elyse'es 
children have been at play. On the Boulevards 
the old elegance of gayety is succeeded by a 
livelier animation. Itinerant musicians gather 
round them ragged groups. Fortune-tellers are 
in great request, especially among the once brill- 
iant Laises and Thaises, now looking more shab- 
by, to whom they predict the speedy restoration 
of Nabobs and Russians, and golden joys. Yon- 
der Punch is achieving a victory over the Evil 
One, who wears the Prussian spiked helmet, and 
whose face has been recently beautified into a 
resemblance to Bismarck. Punch draws to his 
show a laughing audience of Mohlots and recruits 
to the new companies of the National Guard. 
Members of the once formidable police, now 
threadbare and hunger-pinched, stand side by 
side with unfortunate beggars and sinister-look- 
ing patriots who have served their time in the 
jails or galleys. 

Uniforms of all variety are conspicuous — the 
only evidence visible of an enemy at the Walls. 
But the aspects of the wearers of warlike accou- 
trements are dehonnaire and smiling, as of revel- 
ers on a holiday of peace. Among these defend- 
ers of their country, at the door of a crowded 
cafe, stands Frederic Lemercier, superb in the 
costume, brand-new, of a National Guard — his 
dog Fox tranquilly reposing on its haunches, 
with eyes fixed upon its fellow-dog philosophic- 
ally musing on the edge of Punch’s show, w'hose 
master is engaged in the conquest of the Bis- 
marck fiend. 

“ Lemercier,” cried the Vicomte de Breze, 
approaching the cafe, “I scarcely recognize you 
in that martial guise. You look magrdfiquc — 
the galons become you. Peste! an officer al- 
ready ?” 

“ The National Guard and Mobiles are per- 
mitted to choose their own officers, as you are 
aware. I have been elected, but to subaltern 
grade, by the warlike patriots of my department. 
Enguerrand de Vandemar is elected a captain 
of the Mobiles in his, and Victor de Mauleon is 
appointed to the command of a battalion of the 
National Guard. But I soar above jealousy at 
such a moment — 

“‘Eorae a choisi mon bras; je n’examine rien.’” 

“You have no right to be jealous. De Mau- 
leon has had experience and won distinction in 
actual service, and from all I hear is doing won- 
ders with his men — has got them not only to 
keep but to love drill. I heard no less an au- 
thority than General V say that if all the 

officers of the National Guard were like De 
Mauleon, that body would give an example of 
discipline to the line.” 

“ I say nothing as to the promotion of a real 


202 


THE PAKISIANS. 


soldier like the Vicomte — but a Parisian dandy 
like Engueriand de Vandemar!” 

“You forget that Enguerrand received a mil- 
itary education — an advantage denied to you.” 

“ What does that matter? Who cares for ed- 
ucation nowadays? Besides, have I not been 
training ever since the 4th of September, to say 
nothing of the hard work on the ramparts ?” 

Parlez moi de cela: it is indeed hard work 
on the ramparts. Infandum dolorem quorum 
pars magna fui. Take the day duty. What 
with rising at seven o’clock, and being drilled 
between a middle-aged and corpulent grocer on 
one side and a meagre beardless barber’s appren- 
tice on the other ; what with going to the bas- 
tions at eleven, and seeing half one’s companions 
drunk before twelve ; what with trying to keep 
their fists off one’s face when one politely asks 
them not to call one’s general a traitor or a pol- 
troon — the work of the ramparts would be in- 
supportable, if I did not take a pack of cards 
with me, and enjoy a quiet rubber Avith three 
other heroes in some sequestered corner. As for 
night-work, nothing short of the itidomitable for- 
titude of a Parisian could sustain it; the tents 
made expressly not to be water-proof, like the 
groves of the Muses — 

‘per 

Quos et aquae subeant et aurae.’ 

A fellow-companion of mine tucks himself up on 
my rug, and pillows his head on my knapsack. 
I remonstrate — he swears — the other heroes 
wake up and threaten to thrash us both ; and 
just when peace is made, and one hopes for a 
wink of sleep, a detachment of spectators, chiefly 
gamins, coming to see that all is safe in the 
camp, strike up the Marseillaise. Ah, the world 
will ring to the end of time with the sublime at- 
titude of Paris in the face of the Vandal invad- 
ers, especially when it learns that the very shoes 
we stand in are made of card-board. In vain 
we complain. The contractor for shoes is a 
stanch Republican, and jobs by right divine. 
May I ask if you have dined yet ?” 

“Heavens! — no; it is too early. But I am 
excessively hungry. I had only a quarter of 
jugged cat for breakfast, and the brute was 
tough. In reply to your question, may I put 
another — Did you lay in plenty of stoi es ?” 

“Stores? — no; I am a bachelor, and rely on 
the stores of my married friends.” 

“ Poor De Breze ! I sympathize with you, for 
I am in the same boat, and dinner invitations 
have become monstrous rare.” 

“Oh, but you are^ so confoundedly rich! 
What to you are forty francs for a rabbit, or 
eighty francs for a turkey ?” 

“Well, I suppose I am rich, but I have no 
money, and the ungrateful restaurants will not 
give me credit. They don’t believe in better 
days.” 

“ How can you want money?” 

“Very naturally. I had invested my capital 
famously — the best speculations — partly in house 
rents, partly in company shares; and houses pay 
no rents, and nobody will buy company shares. 
I had 1000 napoleons on hand, it is true, when 
Duplessis left Paris — much more, I thought, 
than I could possibly need, for I never believed 
in the siege. But during the first few weeks I 
played at whist with bad luck, and since then so 
many old friends have borrowed of me that I 


doubt if I have 200 francs left. I have dispatch- 
ed four letters to Duplessis by pigeon and bal- 
loon, entreating him to send me 25,000 francs 
by some trusty fellow who will pierce the Prus- 
sian lines. I have had two answers — first, that 
he will find a man ; second, that the man is 
found and on his way. Trust to that man, my 
dear friend, and meanwhile lend me 200 francs.” 

“ Mon cher, desole to refuse ; but I was about 
to ask you to share your 200 francs with me who 
live chiefly by my pen ; and that resource is cut 
ofi*. Still, ilfaut vivre — one must dine.” 

“ That is a fact, and we will dine together 
to-day at my expense, limited liability, though — 
eight francs a head.” 

“ Generous monsieur, I accept. Meanwhile 
let us take a turn toward the Madeleine.” 

The two Parisians quit the cafe, and proceed 
up the Boulevard. On their, way they encounter 
Savarin. 

“ Why,” said De Breze, “ I thought you had 
left Paris Avith madame.” 

“ So 1 did, and deposited her safely Avith the 
Motleys at Boulogne. These kind Americans 
Avere going to England, and they took her with 
them. But I quit Paris ! 1 ! No : 1 am old ; 
I am groAving obese. I have ahvays been short- 
sighted. I can neither Avield a sword nor handle 
a musket. But Paris needs defenders ; and ev- 
ery moment I Avas away from her I sighed to 
myself, ‘ II faut etre la !' I returned before the 
Vandals had possessed themselves of our rail- 
ways, the convoi overcroAvded Avith men like my- 
self, Avho had removed their Avives and families ; 
and Avhen Ave asked each other Avhy Ave Avent 
back, every ansAver Avas the same, ‘ II faut etre 
Id.' — No, poor child, no — I have nothing to give 
you.” 

These last Avords Avere addressed to a Avoman, 
young and handsome, Avith a dress that a feAV 
Aveeks ago might have been admired for taste 
and elegance by the lady leaders of the ton, but 
Avas noAv darned and dirty and draggled. 

“ Monsieur, I did not stop you to ask for alms. 
You do not seem to remember me, M. SaA^aiin.” 

“But I do,” said Lemercier; “surely I ad- 
dress Mademoiselle J idie Canmartin ?” 

“Ah, excuse me, le petit Frederic,” said Ju- 
lie, Avith a sickly attempt at coquettish sprightli- 
ness ; “I had no eyes except for M. Savarin.” 

“ And Avhy only for me, my poor child ?” ask- 
ed the kind-hearted author. 

“Hush!” She drew him aside. “Because 
you can give me neAA's of that monster Gustave. 
It is not true, it can not be true, that he is go- 
ing to be married ?” 

“ Nay, surel}^ mademoiselle, all connection be- 
tAveen you and young Rameau has ceased for 
months — ceased from the date of that illness in 
July which nearly carried him oft’.” 

“I resigned him to the care of his mother,” 
said the girl; “but Avhen he no longer needs a 
mother, he belongs to me. Oh, consider, M. 
SaA’arin, for his sake I refused the most splendid 
offers! When he sought me, I had my coup^ 
opera -box, my cachemires, my jeAvels. The 
Russians — the English — vied for my smiles. 
But I loved the man. I never loved before ; I 
shall nev^er love again ; and after the sacrifices I 
have made for him, nothing shall induce me to 
give him iip. Tell me, I entreat, my dear M. 
Savarin, where he is hiding. He has left the 


THE PARISIANS. 


203 


parental roof, and they refused there to give me 
his address.” 

“ My poor girl, don’t be mechante. It is quite 
true that Gustave Rameau is engaged to be 
married; and any attempt of yours to create 
scandal — ” 

“Monsieur,” interrupted Julie, vehemently, 
“ don’t talk to me about scandal! The man is 
mine, and no one else shall have him. His 
address ?” 

“Mademoiselle,” cried Savarin, angrily, “find 
it out for yourself.” Then, repentant of rude- 
ness to one so young and desolate, he added, in 
mild expostulatory accents, “Come, come, via 
belle enfant, be reasonable ; Gustave is no loss. 
He is reduced to poverty.” 

“ So much the better. When he was well otF, 
I never cost him more than a supper at the 
Maison Doree; and if he is poor, he shall marry 
me, and I will support him I” 

“You!— and how ?” 

“ By my profession when peace comes ; and 
meanwhile I have ofters from a caf6 to recite 
warlike songs. Ah ! you shake your head in- 
credulously. The ballet-dancer recite verses? 
Yes ! he taught me to recite his own Soyez bon 
pour nioi. M. Savarin, do say where I can find 
nion honime.'^ 

“No.” 

“ That is your last word ?” 

“It is.” 

The girl drew her thin shawl round her and 
hurried oft'. Savarin rejoined his friends. “ Is 
that the way you console yourself for the absence 
of madame ?” asked De Bi eze, dryly. 

‘ ‘ Eie ! ” cried Savarin, indignantly ; ‘ ‘ such bad 
jokes are ill-timed. What strange mixtures of 
good and bad, of noble and base, every stratum 
of Paris life contains ! There is that poor girl, 
in one way contemptible, no doubt, and yet in 
another way she has an element of grandeur. 
On the whole, at Paris, the women, with all 
their faults, are of finer mould than the men.” 

“French gallantry has always admitted that 
truth, ’’said Lemercier. “Fox, Fox, Fox !” Ut- 
tering this cry, he darted forward after the dog, 
who had strayed a few yards to salute another 
dog led by a string, and caught the animal in 
his arms. “Pardon me,” he exclaimed, return- 
ing to his friends, “but there are so many snares 
for dogs at present. They are just coming into 
fashion for roasts, and Fox is so plump.” 

“I thought,” said Savarin, “that it was re- 
solved at all the sporting clubs that, be the pinch 
of famine ever so keen, the friend of man should 
not be eaten.” 

“That was while the beef lasted; but since 
we have to come to cats, who shall predict im- 
munity to dogs ? Quid intacturn ne-faste liqui- 
rnusf Nothing is sacred from the hand of ra- 
pine.” 

The church of the Madeleine now stood be- 
fore them. Moblots were playing pitch-and-toss 
on its steps. 

“I don’t wish you to accompany me, mes- 
sieurs,” said Lemercier, apologetically, “ but I 
am going to enter the church.” 

“ To pray ?” asked De Breze, in profound as- 
tonishment. 

“Not exactly; but I want to speak to my 
friend Rochebriant, and I know I shall find him 
there. ” 


“Praying?” again asked De Breze. 

“Yes.” 

“That is curious — a young Parisian exquisite 
at prayer — that is worth seeing. Let us enter 
too, Savarin.” 

They enter the church. It is filled, and 
even the skeptical De Breze is impressed and 
awed by the sight. An intense fervor pervades 
the congregation. The majority, it is true, are 
women, many of them in deep mourning, and 
many of their faces mourning deeper than the 
dress. Every where may be seen gushing tears, 
and every where faintly heard the sound of sti- 
fled sighs. Besides the women were men of all 
ages — young, middle-aged, old, with heads bowed 
and hands clasped, pale, grave, and earnest. Most 
of them were evidently of a superior grade in life 
— nobles, and the higher bourgeoisie : few of the 
ouvrier class, very few, and these were of an ear- 
lier generation. I except soldiers, of whom there 
were many, from the provincial Mobiles, chiefly 
Bretons ; you knew the Breton soldiers by the 
little cross worn on their kepis. 

Among them Lemercier at once distinguished 
the noble countenance of Alain de Rochebriant. 
De Breze and Savarin looked at each other with 
solemn eyes. I know not when either had last 
been within a church ; perhaps both were startled 
to find that religion still existed in Paris — and 
largely exist it does, though little seen on the 
surface of society, little to be estimated by the 
articles of journals and the report of foreigners. 
Unhappily, those among whom it exists are not 
the ruling class — are of the classes that are dom- 
inated over and obscured in every country the 
moment the populace becomes master. And at 
that moment the journals chiefly read were war- 
ring more against the Deity than the Prussians 
— were denouncing soldiers who attended mass. 
“The Gospel certainly makes a bad soldier,” 
writes the patriot Pyat. 

Lemercier knelt down quietly. The other 
two men crept noiselessly out, and stood waiting 
for him on the steps, watching the Moblots (Pa- 
risian Moblots) at play. 

“ I should not wait for the roturier if he had 
not promised me a rotif said the Vicomte de 
Bi eze, with a pitiful attempt at the patrician wit 
of the ancien regime. 

Savarin shrugged his shoulders. ‘ ‘ I am not 
included in the invitation,” said he, “and there- 
fore free to depart. I must go and look up a 
former confrere who was an enthusiastic Red 
Republican, and I fear does not get so much to 
eat since he has no longer an Emperor to abuse.” 

So Savarin went away. A few minutes after- 
ward Lemercier emerged from the church with 
Alain. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

“I KNEW I should find you in the Madeleine,” 
said Lemercier, “and I wished much to know 
when you had news from Duplessis. He and 
your fair fiancee are, with your aunt, still staying 
at Rochebriant ?” 

“Certainly. A pigeon arrived this morning 
with a few lines. All well there, ” 

“And Duplessis thinks, despite the war, that 
he shall be able, when the time comes, to pay 
Louvier the mortgage sum ?” 


204 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ He never doubts that. His credit in London 
is so good. But of course all works of improve- 
ment are stopped. ” 

“ Pray, did he mention me ? — any thing about 
the messenger who was to pierce the Prussian 
lines ?” 

“ What ! has the man not arrived ? It is two 
weeks since he left, ” 

“The Uhlans have no doubt shot him — the 
assassins — and drunk up my 25,000 francs — the 
thieves.” 

“ I hope not. But, in case of delay, Duples- 
sis tells me I am to remit to you 2000 francs for 
your present wants. I will send them to you 
this evening.” 

“ How the deuce do you possess such a sum ?” 

“I came from Brittany with a purse well filled. 
Of course I could 'have no scruples in accepting 
money from my destined father-in-law.” 

‘ ‘ And you can spare this sum ?” 

“ Certainly. The state now provides for me ; 
I am in command of a Breton company. ” 

“True. Come and dine with me and De 
Breze.” 

“Alas! I can not. I have to see both the 
Vandemars before I return to the camp for the 
night. And now — hush — come this way,” draw- 
ing Frederic further from De Breze. “ I have 
famous news for you. A sortie on a grand scale 
is imminent ; in a few days we may hope for it. ” 

“ I have heard that so often that I am incred- 
ulous.” 

“ Take it as a fact now.” 

“What! Trochu has at last matured his 
plan ?” 

“He has changed its original design, which 
was to cut through the Prussian lines to Rouen, 
occupying there the richest country for supplies, 
guarding the left bank of the Seine, and a wa- 
ter-course to convoy them to Paris. The inci- 
dents of war prevented that ; he has a better plan 
now. The victory of the Army of the Loire at 
Orleans opens a new enterprise. We shall cut 
our way through the Prussians, join that army, 
and with united forces fall on the enemy at the 
rear. Keep this a secret as yet, but rejoice with 
me that we shall prove to the invaders what men 
who fight for their native soil can do under the 
protection of Heaven.” 

“Fox, Fox, mon cheri^’’' said Lemercier, as he 
walked toward the Caf€ Riche with De Breze, 
“thou shalt have a. festin de Balthazar under 
the protection of Heaven.” 


CHAPTER XV. 

On leaving Lemercier and De Brezd, Savarin 
regained the Boulevard, and pausing every now 
and then to exchange a few words with ac- 
quaintances — the acquaintances of the genial 
author were numerous — turned into the quartier 
Chaussee d’Antin, and gaining a small neat 
house, with a richly ornamented facade, mount- 
ed very clean, well-kept stairs to a third story. 
On one of the doors on the landing-place was 
nailed a card, inscribed, “Gustave Rameau, 
homme de lettres.” Certainly it is not usual in 
Paris thus to afficher one’s self as “a man of 
letters.” But Genius scorns what is usual. Had 
not Victor Hugo left in the hotel books on the 


Rhine his designation, homme de lettresf' Did 
not the heir to one of the loftiest houses in the 
peerage of England, and who was also a first- 
rate amateur in painting, inscribe on his studio, 

when in Italy, , “ artiste Such examples, 

no doubt, were familiar to Gustave Rameau, and 
'‘'■homme de lettres' was on the scrap of paste- 
board nailed to his door. 

Savarin rang; the door opened, and Gustave 
appeared. The poet was, of course, picturesque- 
ly attired. In his day of fashion he had worn 
within-doors a very pretty fanciful costume, de- 
signed after portraits of the young Raphael ; that 
costume he had preserved — he wore it now. It 
looked very threadbare, and the pourpoint very 
soiled. But the beauty of the poet’s face had 
sumved the lustre of the garments. True, thanks 
to absinthe, the cheeks had become somew'hat 
puffy and bloated. Gray was distinctly visible 
in the long ebon tresses. But still the beauty of 
the face was of that rare type w'hich a Thorwald- 
sen or a Gibson seeking a model for a Narcissus 
w'ould have longed to fix into marble. 

Gustave received his former chief with a cer- 
tain air of resei'ved dignity; led him into his 
chamber, only divided by a curtain from his ac- 
commodation forwashing and slumber, and placed 
him in an arm-chair beside a drowsy fire — fuel 
had already become very dear. 

“ Gustave,” said Savarin, “are you in a mood 
favorable to a little serious talk ?” 

“ Serious talk from M. Savarin is a novelty 
too great not to command my profoundest in- 
terest.” 

“ Thank you — and to begin : I w^ho know the 
world and mankind advise you, who do not, nev- 
er to meet a man who wishes to do you a kind- 
ness wdth an ungracious sarcasm. Irony is a 
weapon I ought to be skilled in, but weapons are 
used against enemies, and it is only a tyro who 
flourishes his rapier in the face of his friends.” 

“I was not aware that M. Savarin still per- 
mitted me to regard him as a friend. ” 

“Because I discharged the duties of friend — 
remonstrated, advised, and warned. However, 
let by-gones be by-gones. I entreated you not to 
quit the safe shelter of the paternal roof. You 
in.sisted on doing so. I entreated you not to send 
to one of the most ferocious of the Red, or, rath- 
er, the Communistic, journals articles veiy elo- 
quent, no doubt, but which would most seriously 
injure you in the eyes of quiet, orderly people, 
and compromise your future literary career, for 
the sake of a temporary flash in the pan during 
a very evanescent period of revolutionary excite- 
ment. You scorned my adjurations, but at all 
events you had the grace not to append your true 
name to those truculent effusions. In literature, 
if literature revive in France, we two are hence- 
forth separated. But I do not forego the friend- 
ly interest I took in you in the days w'hen you 
were so continually in my house. My wife, who 
liked you so cordially, implored me to look after 
you during her absence from Paris, and, enjin, 
mon pauvre garfon, it w'ould grieve me veiy much 
if, when she comes back, I had to say to her, 
‘Gustave Rameau has thrown away the chance 
of redemption and of happiness which you deem- 
ed was secure to him.’ A Vceil 7nalade, la lumi- 
&re nuit.” 

So saying, he held out his hand kindly. 

Gustave, who was far from deficient in affec- 


THE PARISIANS. 


£05 


tionate or tender impulses, took the hand respect- 
fully, and pressed it warmly. 

“Forgive me if 1 have been ungracious, M. 
Savarin, and vouchsafe to hear my explanation.” 

“Willingly, mon gargon.'' 

“When 1 became convalescent, well enough 
to leave my father’s house, there were circum- 
stances which compelled me to do so. A young 
man accustomed to the life of a gargon can’t be 
always tied to his mother’s apron-strings.” 

“Especially if the apron-pocket does not con- 
tain a bottle of absinthe,” said Savarin, dryly. 
“ You may well color and try to look angry ; but 
I know that the doctor strictly forbade the use 
of that deadly liqueur, and enjoined your mother 
to keep strict watch on your liability to its temp- 
tations. And hence one cause of your ennui un- 
der the paternal roof. But if there you could 
not imbibe absinthe, you were privileged to en- 
joy a much diviner intoxication. There you 
could have the foretaste of domestic bliss — the so- 
ciety of the girl you loved, and who was pledged 
to become your wife. Speak frankly. Did not 
that society itself begin to be wearisome ?” 

“No,” cried Gustave, eagerly, “it was not 
wearisome, but — ” 

“ Yes, but—” 

“ But it could not be all-sufficing to a soul of 
fire like mine.” 

“ Hem !” murmured Savarin — “ a soul of fire ! 
This is very interesting; pray go on.” 

“ The calm, cold, sister-like affection of a child- 
ish, undeveloped nature, which knew no passion 
except for art, and was really so little emanci- 
pated from the nursery as to take for serious truth 
all the old myths of religion — such companionship 
may be very soothing and pleasant when one is ly- 
ing on one’s sofa, and must live by rule ; but when j 
one regains the vigor of youth and health — ” 

“Do not pause,” said Savarin, gazing with 
more compassion than envy on that melancholy 
impersonation of youth and health. “When 
one regains that vigor of which 1 myself have no ! 
recollection, what happens?” 

“The thirst for excitement, the goads of am- 
bition, the irresistible claims which the world 
urges upon genius, return.” 

“And that genius, finding itself at the north 
pole amidst Cimmerian darkness in the atmos- 
phere of a childish intellect — in other words, the 
society of a pure-minded virgin, who, though a 
good romance-writer, writes nothing but what a 
virgin may read, and, thougli a bel esprit, says 
lier prayers and goes to church — then genius — 
well, pardon my ignorance — what does genius 
do ?” 

“ Oh, M. Savarin, M. Savarin ! don’t let us talk 
any more. There is no sympathy between us. 

I can not bear that bloodless, mocking, cynical 
mode of dealing with grand emotions, which be- 
longs to the generation of the Doctrinaires. I 
am not a Thiers or a Guizot.” 

“ Good Heavens! who ever accused 3^011 of be- 
ing either ? I did not mean to be cynical. Ma- 
demoiselle Cicogna has often said I am, but I did 
; not think you would. Pardon me. I quite agree 
; with the philosopher who asserted that the wis- 
dom of the past was an imposture, that the mean- 
est intellect now living is wiser than the great- 
: est intellect which is buried in P^re la Chaise; 

!' because the dwarf who follows the giant, when | 
1 perched on the shoulders of the giant, sees far- 1 
' P 


ther than the giant ever could. Allez. I go 
in for your generation. I abandon Guizot and 
Thiers. Do condescend and explain to my dull 
understanding, as the inferior mortal of a former 
age, what are the grand emotions which impel a 
soul of fire in your wiser generation. The thirst 
ot excitement — what excitement? The goads of 
ambition — whaf ambition ?” 

“ A new social s\'stem is struggling from the 
dissolving elements of the old one, as, in the fables 
of priestcraft, the soul frees itself from the bod}' 
which has become ripe for the grave. Of that 
new system I aspire to be a champion — a leader. 
Behold the excitement that allures me, the ambi- 
tion that goads !” 

“ Thank you,” said Savarin, meekly ; “lam 
answered. I recognize the dwarf perched on 
the back of the giant. Quitting these lofty 
themes, I venture to address to }"ou now one 
simple matter-of-fact question — How about Ma- 
demoiselle Cicogna? Do you think you can in- 
duce her to transplant herself to the new social 
system, which I presume will abolish, among oth- 
er obsolete myths, the institution of marriage ?” 

‘ ‘ M. Savarin, your question offends me. The- 
oretically I am opposed to the existing supersti- 
tions that encumber the very simple principle b}' 
which may be united two persons so long as they 
desire the union, and separated so soon as the 
union becomes distasteful to either. But I am 
perfectl}" aware that such theories would revolt 
a young lady like Mademoiselle Cicogna. I 
have never even named them to her, and our en- 
gagement holds good.” 

“Engagement of marriage? No period for 
the ceremony fixed ?” 

“That is not my fault. I urged it on Isaura 
with all earnestness before I left my father's 
house.” 

“That was long after the siege had begun. 
Listen to me, Gustave. No persuasion of mine, 
or my wife’s, or Mrs. Morley’s could induce 
Isaura to quit Paris while it was yet time. She 
said, very simply, that, having pledged her troth 
and hand to you, it would be treason to honor and 
dut}' if she should allow any considerations for 
herself to be even discussed so long as you needed 
her presence. You were then still suff'ering, and, 
though convalescent, not without danger of a re- 
lapse. And your mother said to her — I heard 
the words — ‘ ’Tis not for his bodily health I 
could dare to ask you to stay, when every man 
who can afford it is sending away his wife, sis- 
ters, daughters. As for that, I should suffice to 
tend him ; but if you go, I resign all hope for 
the health of his mind and his soul.’ I think 
at Paris there may be female poets and artists 
whom that sort of argument would not have 
much influenced. But it so happens that Isaura 
is not a Parisienne. She believes in those old 
myths which you think fatal to svmpathies with 
yourself ; and those old myths also lead her to 
believe that where a woman has promised she 
will devote her life to a man, she can not for- 
sake him when told by his mother that she is 
necessary to the health of his mind and his soul. 
Stav. Before you interrupt me let me finish 
what I have to say. It appears that, so soon as 
your bodil}' health was improved, you felt that 
your mind and your soul could take care of them- 
selves ; and certainly it seems to me that Isaura 
Cicogna is no longer of the smallest use to eitlier.” 


20G 


THE PARISIANS. 


Rameau was evidently much disconcerted by 
this speech. He saw what Savarin was driving 
at — the renunciation of all bond between Isaura 
and himself. He was not prepared for such re- 
nunciation. He still felt for the Italian as much 
of love as he could feel for any woman who did 
not kneel at his feet, as at those of Apollo con- 
descending to the homage of Arcadian maids. 
Rut, on the one hand, he felt that many circum- 
stances had occurred since the disaster at Sedan 
to render Isaura a very much less desirable par- 
tie than she had been when he had first wrung 
from her the pledge of bethrothal. In the palmy 
times of a government in which literature and 
art commanded station and insured fortune Isau- 
ra, whether as authoress or singer, was a brilliant 
marriage for Gustave Rameau. She had also 
then an assured and competent, if modest, in- 
come. But when times change, people change 
with them. As the income for the moment (and 
Heaven only can say how long that moment 
might last), Isaura’s income had disappeared. 
It will be recollected that Louvier had invested 
her whole fortune in the houses to be built in 
the street called after his name. No houses, even 
when built, paid any rent now. Louvier had 
quitted Paris, and Isaura could only be subsist- 
ing upon such small sum she might have had in 
hand before the siege commenced. All career 
in such literature and art as Isaura adorned was 
at a dead stop. Now, to do Rameau justice, he 
was by no means an avaricious or mercenary man. 
But he yearned for modes of life to which mon- 
ey was essential. He liked his “ comforts and 
his comforts included the luxuries of elegance 
and show— comforts not to be attained by mar- 
riage with Isaura under existing circumstances. 

Nevertheless it is quite true that he had urged 
her to marry him at once before he had quitted 
his father’s house; and her modest shrinking 
from such proposal, however excellent the rea- 
sons for delay in the national calamities of the 
time, as well as the poverty which the calamity 
threatened, had greatly wounded his amour pro- 
pre. He had always felt that her affection for 
him was not love; and though he could recon- 
cile himself to that conviction when many solid 
advantages were attached to the prize of her love, 
and when he was ill and penitent and maudlin, 
and the calm affection of a saint seemed to him 
infinitely preferable to the vehement passion of a 
sinner — yet when Isaura was only Isaura by her- 
self — Isaura minus all the et ccetera which had 
])reviously been taken into account — the want 
of adoration for himself very much lessened her 
value. 

Still, though he acquiesced in the delayed ful- 
fillment of the engagement with Isaura, he had 
no thought of withdrawing from the engagement 
itself, and after a slight pause he replied : “You 
do me great injustice if you suppose that the oc- 
cupations to which I devote myself render me 
less sensible to the merits of Mademoiselle Cico- 
gna, or less eager for our union. On the cen- 
traiy, I will confide to you — as a man of the 
world — one main reason why I quitted my fa- 
ther’s house, and why I desire to keep my pres- 
ent address a secret. Mademoiselle Caumar- 
tin conceived for me a passion — a caprice — 
which was very flattering for a time, but which 
latterly became very troublesome. Figure to 
yourself — she daily came to our house while I 


was lying ill, and with the greatest difficulty my 
mother got her out of it. That was not all. |<he 
pestered me with letters containing all sorts of 
threats — nay, actually kept watch at the house ; 
and one day when I entered the carriage with my 
mother and Signora Venosta for a drive in the 
Bois (meaning to call for Isaura by the way), she 
darted to the carriage door, caught my hand, 
and would have made a scene if the coachman 
had given her leave to do so. Luckily he had 
the tact to whip on his horses, and we escaped. 
I had some little difficulty in convincing the 
Signora Venosta that the girl was crazed. But 
I felt the danger I incurred of her coming upon 
me some moment when in company with Isaura, 
and so I left my father’s house; and naturally 
wishing to steer clear of this vehement little de- 
mon till I am safely married, I keep my ad- 
dress a secret from all who are likely to tell her 
of it.” 

“Y'ou do wisely if you are really afraid of 
her, and can not trust your nerves to say to her 
plainly, ‘ I am engaged to be married ; all is at 
an end between us. Do not force me to employ 
the police to protect myself from unwelcome 
importunities.’ ” 

“Honestly speaking, I doubt if I have the 
nerve to do that, and I doubt still more if it 
would be of any avail. It is very ennuyant to 
be so passionately loved ; but, que voulez votis ? 
It is my fate.” 

“ Poor martyr ! I condole with you : and to 
say truth, it was chiefly to warn you of Made- 
moiselle Caumartin's pertinacity that I called this 
evening.” 

Here Savarin related the particulars of his 
rencontre Julie, and concluded by saying: 
“I suppose I must take your word of honor that 
you will firmly resist all temptation to renew a 
connection which would be so incompatible with 
the respect due to yowv fiancee f Fatherless and 
protectorless as Isaura is, I feel bound to act as 
a virtual guardian to one in whom my wife takes 
so deep an interest, and to whom, as she thinks, 
she had some hand in bringing about your en- 
gagement : she is committed to no small respon- 
sibilities, Do not allow poor Julie, whom 1 sin- 
cerely pity, to force on me the unpleasant duty 
of warning your fiancee of the dangers to which 
she might be subjected by marriage with an 
Adonis whose fate it is to be so profoundly be- 
loved by the sex in general, and ballet nymphs 
in particular.’’ 

“There is no chance of so disagreeable a duty 
being incumbent on you, M. Savarin, Of course, 
what 1 myself have told you in confidence is sa- 
cred.” 

“ Certainly. There are things in the life of a 
garQon before marriage which would be an af- 
front to the modesty of his fiancee to communi- 
cate and discuss. But then those things must 
belong exclusively to the past, .and cast no shad- 
ow over the future. I will not interrupt you 
further. No doubt you have work for the night 
before you. Do the Red journalists for whom 
you write p.ay enough to support you in these 
terribly dear times ?” 

“ Scarcely. But I look forward to wealth and 
fame in the future. And you ?” 

“I just escape starvation. If the siege last 
much longer, it is not of the gout I shall die. 
Good-night to you.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


207 


CHAPTER XVI. 

IsAURA had, as we have seen, been hitherto 
saved by the siege and its consequences from the 
fulfillment of her engagement to Gustave Ra- 
meau ; and since he had quitted his father’s 
house she had not only seen less of him, but a 
certain chill crept into his converse in the visits 
he paid to her. The compassionate feeling his 
illness had excited, confirmed by the unwonted 
gentleness of his mood, and the short-lived re- 
morse with w'hich he spoke of his past faults and 
follies, necessarily faded away in proportion as 
he regained that kind of febrile strength which 
was his normal state of health, and with it the 
arrogant self-assertion which was ingrained in 
his character. But it was now more than ever 
that she became aware of the antagonism be- 
tween all that constituted his inner life and her 
own. It was not that he volunteered in her pres- 
ence the express utterance of those opinions, so- 
cial or religious, which he addressed to the pub- 
lic in the truculent journal to which, under a nom 
deplume^ he was the most inflammatory contrib- 
utor. Whether it was that he shrank from in- 
sulting the ears of the pure virgin whom he had 
wooed as wife with avowals of his disdain of 
marriage bonds, or perhaps from shocking yet 
more her womanly hnmanity and her religious 
faith by cries for the blood of anti-Republican 
traitors and the downfall of Christian altars ; or 
whether he yet clung, though with relapsing af- 
fection, to the hold which her promise had im- 
])osed on him, and felt that that hold would be 
forever gone, and that she would recoil from his 
side in terror and dismay, if she once learned 
tliat the man who had implored her to be his 
saving angel from the comparatively mild errors 
of youth had so belied his assurance, so mocked 
her credulity, as deliberately to enter into active 
warfare against all that he knew her sentiments 
regarded as noble and her conscience received 
as divine — despite the suppression of avowed 
doctrine on his part, the total want of sympathy 
between these antagonistic natures made itself 
felt by both — more promptly felt by Isaura. If 
Gustave did not frankly announce to her in that 
terrible time (when all that a little later broke 
out on the side of the Communists was more or 
less forcing ominous way to the lips of those who 
talked with confidence to each other, whether 
to approve or to condemn) the associates with 
Avhom he was leagued, the path to which he had 
committed his career — still for her instincts for 
genuine Art — which for its development needs 
the serenity of peace, which for its ideal needs 
dreams that soar into the Infinite — Gustave had 
only the scornful sneer of the man who identifies 
with his ambition the violent upset of all that 
civilization has established in this world, and the 
blank negation of all that patient hope and he- 
roic aspiration which humanity carries on into 
the next. 

On his side Gustave Rameau, who was not 
without certain fine and delicate attributes in a 
complicated nature over which the personal van- 
ity and the mobile temperament of the Parisian 
reigned supreme, chafed at the restraints im- 
posed on him. No matter what a man’s doc- 
trines may be — however abominable you and I 
may deem them — man desires to find in the 
dearest fellowship he can establish that sym- 


pathy in the woman his choice singles out from 
her sex — deference to his opinions, sympathy 
with his objects, as man. So, too, Gustave’s 
sense of honor — and according to his own Pa- 
risian code that sense was keen — became exqui- 
sitely stung by the thought that he was compelled 
to play the part of a mean dissimulator to the 
girl for whose opinions he had the profoundest 
contempt. How could these two, betrothed to 
each other, not feel, though without coming to 
open dissension, that between them had flowed 
the inlet of water by which they had been riven 
asunder ? What man, if he can imagine him- 
self a Gustave Rameau, can blame the revolu- 
tionist absorbed in ambitious projects for turn- 
ing the pyramid of society topsy-turvy, if he 
shrank more and more from the companionship 
of a betrothed with whom he could not venture 
to exchange three words without caution and re- 
serve ? And what woman can blame an Isaura 
if she felt a sensation of relief at the very neglect 
of the affianced whom she had compassionated 
and could never love ? 

Possibly the reader may best judge of the 
state of Isaura’s mind at this time by a few brief 
extracts from an imperfect fragmentary jour- 
nal, in which, amidst saddened and lonely hours, 
she held converse with herself. 

“ One day, at Enghien, I listened silently to a 
conversation between INI. Savarin and the En- 
glishman, who sought to explain the conception 
of duty in which the German poet has given such 
noble utterance to the thoughts of the German 
philosopher — viz., that moral aspiration has the 
same goal as the artistic — the attainment to the 
calm delight wherein the pain of effbrt disappears 
in the content of achievement. Thus in life, as 
in art, it is through discipline that we arrive at 
freedom, and duty only completes itself when all 
motives, all actions, are attuned into one harmo- 
nious whole, and it is not striven for as duty, but 
enjoyed as happiness. M, Savarin treated this 
theory with the mockery with which the French 
wit is ever apt to treat what it terms German 
mysticism. According to him, duty must al- 
ways be a hard and difficult struggle ; and he 
said, laughingly, ‘Whenever a man says, “I 
have done my duty,” it is with a long face and 
a mournful sigh.’ 

“Ah, how devoutly I listened to the English- 
man ! hQ,w harshly the Frenchman’s irony jarred 
upon my ears ! And yet now, in the duty that 
life imposes on me, to fulfill which I strain every 
power vouchsafed to my nature, and seek to 
crush down every impulse that rebels, where is 
the promised calm, where any approacli to the 
content of achievement ? Contemplating the 
way before me, the Beautiful even of Art has 
vanished. I see but cloud and desert. Can this 
which I assume to be duty really be so? Ah, 
is it not sin even to ask my heart that question ? 

♦ * ♦ ♦ * ♦ 

‘ ‘ Madame Rameau is very angry with her son 
for his neglect both of his parents and of me. I 
have had to take his part against her. I would 
not have him lose their love. Poor Gustave! 
But when Madame Rameau suddenly said to- 
day, ‘ I erred in seeking the union between thee 
and Gustave. Retract thy promise ; in doing so 
thou wilt be justified’ — oh, the strange joy that 
flashed upon me as she spoke ! Am I justified ? 


208 


THE PARISIANS. 


Am I? Oh, if that Englishman had never cross- 
ed my path ! Oh, if 1 had never loved ! or if in 
the last time we met he had not asked for my 
love, and confessed his own ! Then, I think, I 
could honestly reconcile my conscience with my 
longings, and say to Gustave, ‘ We do not suit 
each other; be we both released!’ But now — 
is it that Gustave is really changed from what 
he was, when in despondence at my own lot, and 
in pitying belief that I might brighten and exalt 
his, 1 plighted my troth to him? or is it not 
rather that the choice I thus voluntarily made 
became so intolerable a thought the moment 1 
knew I was beloved and sought by another, and 
from that moment I lost the strength I had be- 
fore — strength to silence the voice at my own 
heart? What! is it the image of that other one 
which is persuading me to be false — to exag- 
gerate the failings, to be blind to the merits, of 
him who lias a right to say, ‘ I am what I was 
when thou didst pledge thyself to take me for 
better or for worse ?’ 

“Gustave has been here aftei' an absence of 
several days. He was not alone. The good 
Abbe Vertpre and Madame de Vandemar, with 
lier son, M. Raoul, Avere present. They had 
come on matters connected with our ambulance. 
'L'liey do not know of my engagement to Gus- 
tave; and seeing him in the uniform of a Na- 
tional Guard, the Abbe courteously addressed 
to him some questions as to the possibility of 
checking the terrible increase of the vice of in- 
toxication, so alien till of late to the habits of 
the Parisians, and becoming fatal to discipline 
and bodily endurance — could the number of the 
cantines on the ramparts be more limited? Gus- 
tave answered, with mdeness and bitter sarcasm, 
‘ Before priests could be critics in military mat- 
ters they must undertake militaiy service them- 
selves. ’ 

“ The Abbe replied, with unalterable good hu- 
mor, ‘ But in order to criticise the effects of 
drunkenness, must one get drunk one’s self?’ 
Gustave was put out, and retired into a corner 
of the room, keeping sullen silence till my other 
visitors left. 

“ Then, before I could myself express the pain 
his words and manner had given me, he said, ab- 
l uptly, ‘ I wonder how you can tolerate the tar- 
fuferie which may arouse on the comic stage, 
but in the tragedy of these times is revolting.’ 
'riiis speech roused my anger, and the conversa- 
tion that ensued was the gravest that had ever 
passed between us. 

“If Gustave were of stronger nature and more 
concentrated will, I believe that the only feelings 
I should have for him would be antipathy and 
dread. But it is his very weaknesses and in- 
consistencies that secure to him a certain ten- 
derness of interest. I think he could never be 
judged without great indulgence by women ; 
there is in him so much of the child — wayward, 
irritating at one moment, and the next penitent, 
affectionate. One feels as if persistence in evil 
were impossible to one so delicate both in mind 
and form. That peculiar order of genius to 
which he belongs seems as if it ought to be so 
estranged from all directions, violent or coarse. 
AVhen in poetry he seeks to utter some audacious 
and defying sentiment, the substance melts away 
in daintiness of expression, in soft, lute -like 


strains of slender music. And when he has 
stung, angered, revolted my heart the most, 
suddenly he subsides into such pathetic gentle- 
ness, such tearful remorse, that I feel as if re- 
sentment to one so helpless, desertion of one 
who must fall without the support of a friendly 
hand, were a selfish cruelty. It seems to me 
as if I were dragged toward a precipice by a sick- 
ly child clinging to my robe. 

“But in this last conversation Avith him his 
language in regard to subjects I hold most sa- 
cred drcAv forth from me words Avhich startled 
him, and Avhich may avail to saA'e him from that 
Avorst insanity of human minds — the mimicry of 
the Titans Avho Avould have dethroned a God to 
restore a Chaos. I told him frankly that I had 
only promised to share his fate on my faith in 
his assurance of my poAver to guide it heaven- 
Avard, and that if the opinions he announced 
Avere seriously entertained, and put forth in de- 
fiance of. heaven itself, we Avere separated for- 
ever. I told him hoAv earnestly, in the calami- 
ties of the time, my OAvn soul had sought to take 
refuge in thoughts and hopes beyond the earth, 
and hoAv deeply many a sentiment that in former 
days passed by me Avith a smile in the light talk 
of the salons noAv shocked me as an outrage on 
the reverence Avhich the mortal child OAves to the 
Divine Father. I OAvned to him hoAv much of 
comfort, of sustainment, of thought and aspira- 
tion, elevated beyond the sphere of Art in Avhich 
I had hitherto sought the purest air, the loftiest 
goal, I owed to intercourse with minds like that 
of the Abbe de Vertpre, and hoAv painfully 1 
felt, as if I Avere guilty of ingratitude, when he 
compelled me to listen to insults on those Avhom 
1 recognized as benefactors. 

“ I Avished to speak sternly ; but it is my great 
misfortune, my prevalent Aveakness, that I can 
not be stern Avhen I ought to be. It is with me 
in life as in art. I never could on the stage 
haA-e taken the part of a Norma or a Medea. If 
I attempt in fiction a character which deserves 
condemnation, I am untrue to poetic justice. I 
can not condemn and execute; 1 can but com- 
passionate and pardon the creature I myself have 
created. I aa'us never in the real Avorld stern but 
to one ; and then, alas ! it AA-as because I loA-ed 
Avhere I could no longer love Avith honor, and I, 
knoAving my Aveakness, had terror lest I should 
yield. 

“So Gustave did not comprehend from my 
voice, my manner, hoAv gravely I Avas in earnest. 
But, himself softened, affected to tears, he con- 
fessed his OAvn faults — ceased to argue in order to 
praise; and — and — uttering protestations seem- 
ingly the most sincere, he left me bound to him 
still — bound to him still. Woe is me !” 

It is true that Isaura had come more directly 
under the influence of religion than she had been 
in the earlier dates of this narrative. There is a 
time in the lives of most of us, and especially in 
the liA'es of women, Avhen, despondent of all joy 
in an earthly future, and tortured by conflicts be- 
tAveen inclination and duty, Ave transfer all the 
passion and fervor of our troubled souls to enthu- 
siastic yearnings for the Divine Love — seeking to 
rebaptize ourselves in the fountain of its mercy, 
taking thence the only hopes that can cheer, the 
only strength that can sustain us. Such a time 
had come to Isaura. Formerly she had escaped 


THE PARISIANS. 


209 


from the griefs of the work-day world int6 the 
garden-land of Art. Now Art had grown un- 
welcome to her, almost hateful. Gone was the 
spell from the garden-land ; its flowers were fad- 
ed, its paths were stony, its sunshine had van- 
ished in mist and rain. There are two voices 
of Nature in the soul of the genuine artist — 
tliat is, of him who, because he can create, 
comprehends the necessity of the great Creator, 
'fiiose voices are never both silent. When one 
is hushed, the other becomes distinctly audible. 
The one speaks to him of Art, the other of Re- 
ligion. 

At that period several societies for the relief 
and tendance of the wounded had been formed 
by the women of Paris — the earliest, if I mis- 
take not, by ladies of the highest rank — among 
whom were the Comtesse de Vandemar and the 
Contessa di Rimini — though it necessarily in- 
cluded others of station less elevated. To this 
society, at the request of Alain de Rochebriant 
and of Enguerrand, Isaura had eagerly attached 
lierself. It occupied much of her time ; and in 
connection with it she was brought much into 
sympathetic acquaintance with Raoul de Van- 
demar, the most zealous and active member of 
that society of St. Francois de Sales, to which 
belonged other young nobles of the Legitimist 
creed. The passion of Raoul’s life was the re- 
lief of human suflering. In him was personified 
the ideal of Christian charity. I think all, or 
most of us, have known what it is to pass under 
the influence of a nature that is so far akin to 
ours that it desires to become something better 
and higlier than it is — that desire being para- 
mount in ourselves — but seeks to be that some- 
thing in ways not akin to, but remote from, the 
ways in which we seek it. When this contact 
happens, either one nature, by the mere force 
of will, subjugates and absorbs the other, or 
both, while preserving their own individuality, 
apart and independent, enrich themselves by mu- 
tual interchange ; and the asperities which differ- 
ences of taste and sentiment in detail might oth- 
erwise provoke melt in the sympathy which unites 
spirits striving with equal earnestness to rise near- 
er to the unseen and unattainable Source, which 
they equally recognize as Divine, 

Perhaps, had these two persons met a year 
ago in the ordinary intercourse of the world, 
neither would have detected the sympathy of 
which I speak. Raoul was not without the prej- 
udice against artists and writers of romance that 
are shared by many who cherish the persuasion 
that all is vanity which does not concentrate im- 
agination and intellect in the destinies of the soul 
liereafter, and Isaura might have excited his 
compassion, certainly not his reverence ; while 
to her his views on all that seeks to render the 
actual life attractive and embellished, through 
the accomplishments of Muse and Grace, would 
have seemed the narrow-minded asceticism of a 
bigot. But now, amidst the direful calamities 
of the time, the beauty of both natures became 
visible to each. To the eyes of Isaura tender- 
ness became predominant in the monastic self- 
denial of Raoul. To the eyes of Raoul devotion 
became predominant in the gentle thoughtfulness 
of Isaura. Their intercourse was in ambulance 
and hospital — in care for the wounded, in prayer 
for the dying. Ah ! it is easy to declaim against 
the frivolities and vices of Parisian society as it 


appears on the surface ; and in revolutionary 
times it is the very worst of Paris that ascends 
in scum to the top. But descend below the sur- 
face, even in that demoralizing suspense of order, 
and nowhere on earth might the angel have be- 
held the image of humanity more amply vindi- 
cating its claim to the heritage of heaven. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

The warning announcement of some great ef- 
fort on the part of the besieged which Alain had 
given to Lemercier was soon to be fulfilled. 

For some days the principal thoroughfares 
were ominously lined with military convois. The 
loungers on the Boulevards stopped to gaze on 
the long defiles of troops and cannon, commis- 
sariat conveyances, and — saddening accompani- 
ments ! — the vehicles of various ambulances for 
the removal of the wounded. Witli what glee the 
loungers said to each other, Enjin!" Among 
all the troops that Paris sent forth none were so 
popular as those which Paris had not nurtured — 
the sailors. From the moment they arrived the 
sailors had been the pets of the capital. They 
soon proved themselves the most notable con- 
trast to that force which Paris herself had pro- 
duced — the National Guard. Their frames were 
hardy, their habits active, their discipline per- 
fect, their manners mild and polite. “Oh, if all 
our troops were like these ! ” was the common 
exclamation of the Parisians. 

At last burst forth upon Paris the proclama- 
tions of General Trochu and General Ducrot ; 
the first brief, calm, and Breton -like, ending 
with “Putting our trust in God, March on 
for our country!” the second more detailed, 
more candidly stating obstacles and difficulties, 
but fiery with eloquent enthusiasm, not unsup- 
ported by military statistics, in the 400 cannon, 
two-thirds of which were of the largest calibre, 
that no material object could resist ; more than 
150,000 soldiers, all well armed, well equipped, 
abundantly provided with munitions, and all 
(.7’eu ai T espoir) animated by an irresistible ar- 
dor. “For me,” concludes the general, “I am 
resolved. I swear before you, before the whole 
nation, that I will not re-enter Paris except as 
dead or victorious. ” 

At these proclamations who then at Paris does 
not recall the burst of enthusiasm that stirred the 
surface ? Trochu became once more popular ; 
even the Communistic or atheistic journals re- 
frained from complaining that he attended mass, 
and invited his countrymen to trust in a God. 
Ducrot was more than popular — he was adored. 

The several companies in which De Mauleon 
and Enguerrand served departed toward their 
post early on the same morning, that of the 28th, 
All the previous night, while Enguerrand was 
buried in profound slumber, Raoul remained in 
his brother’s room ; sometimes on his knees be- 
fore the ivory crucifix, which had been their 
mother’s last birthday gift to her youngest son — 
sometimes seated beside the bed in profound and 
devout meditation. At daybreak Madame de 
Vandemar stole into the chamber. Unconscious 
of his brother’s watch, he had asked her to wake 
him in good time, for the young man was a sound 
sleeper. Shading the candle she bore with one 


210 


THE PARISIANS. 


hand, with the other she drew aside the curtain, 
and looked at Enguerrand’s calm, fair face, its 
lips parted in the liappy smile which seemed to 
carry joy with it wherever its sunshine played. 
Her tears fell noiselessly on her darling’s cheek ; 
she then knelt down and prayed for strength. 
As she rose she felt Raoul’s arm around her; 
they looked at eacli other in silence ; then she 
bowed her head, and wakened Enguerrand with 
her lips. “Pas de querelle, vies aviis," he mur- 
mured, opening his sweet blue eyes drowsily. 
“Ah, it was a dream! I thought Jules and 
Emile” (two young friends of his) “were worry- 
ing each other ; and you know, dear Raoul, that 
I am the most officious of peace-makers. Time 
to rise, is it? No peace-making to-day. Kiss 
me again, mother, and say, ‘ Bless thee.’ ” 

“Bless thee, bless thee, my child,” cried the 
mother, wrapjjing her arms passionately round 
him, and in tones choked with sobs. 

“Now leave me, war/iaw,” said Enguerrand, 
resorting to the infantine ordinary name, which 
he had not used for years. — “ Raoul, stay and 
help me to dress. I must be tres beau to-day. 
— I shall join thee at breakfast, mavian. Early 
for such repast, but Vappeiit vient en mangeant. 
Mind the coffee is hot.” 

Enguerrand, always careful of each detail of 
dress, was especially so that morning, and espe- 
cialK gay, humming the old air, Partant pour la 
Syrie. But his gayety was checked when Raoul, 
taking from his breast a holy talisman, which he 
habitually wore there, suspended it with loving 
hands round his brother’s neck. It was a small 
crystal set in Byzantine filigree ; imbedded in it 
was a small splinter of wood, said, by pious tra- 
dition, to be a relic of the Divine Cross. It had 
been for centuries in the family of the Contessa di 
Rimini, and was given by lier to Raoul, the only 
gift she had ever made him, as an emblem of the 
sinless ])urity of the affection that united those 
two souls in the bonds of the beautiful belief. 

“ She bade me transfer it to thee to-day, my 
brother,” said Raoul, simply ; ‘ ‘ and now without 
a pang I can gird on thee thy soldier’s sword.” 

Enguerrand clasped his brother in his arms, 
and kissed. him with passionate fervor. “Oh, 
Raoul, how I love thee I how good thou hast 
ever been to me ! how many sins thou hast saved 
me from ! how indulgent thou hast been to those 
from which thou couldst not save 1 Think on 
that, my brother, in case we do not meet again 
on earth.” 

“ Hush, hush, Enguerrand I No gloomy fore- 
bodings now ! Come — come hither, ray half of 
life, my sunny half of life !” And uttering these 
words, he led Enguerrand toward the crucifix, 
and there, in deep and more solemn voice, said, 
“Let us pray.” So the brothers knelt side by 
side, and Raoul prayed aloud as only such souls 
can pray. 

When they descended into the salon where 
breakfast was set out, they found assembled sev- 
eral of their relations, and some of Enguerrand’s 
young friends not engaged in the sortie. One 
or two of the latter, indeed, were disabled from 
fighting by wounds in former fields ; they left 
their sick-beds to bid him good-by. Unspeaka- 
ble was the affection this genial nature inspired 
in all who came into the circle of its winning 
magic ; and when, tearing himself from them, 
he descended the stair, and passed with light 


step' through the porte cochere, there was a crowd 
around the house — so widely had his popularity 
spread among even the lower classes, from which 
the Mobiles in his regiment were chiefly com- 
posed. He departed to the place of rendezvous 
amidst a chorus of exhilarating cheers. 

Not thus lovingly tended on, not thus cordial- 
ly greeted, was that equal idol of a former gen- 
eration, Victor de Mauleon. No pious friend 
prayed beside his couch, no loving kiss waked 
him from his slumbers. At the gray of the No- 
vember dawn he rose from a sleep which had no 
smiling dreams, with that mysterious instinct of 
punctual will which can not even go to sleeji 
without fixing beforehand the exact moment in 
which sleep shall end.* He, too, like Enguer- 
rand, dressed himself with care — unlike Enguer- 
rand, with care strictly soldier-like. Then, see- 
ing he had some little time yet before him, he 
rapidly revisited pigeon-holes and drawers, in 
which might be found by prying eyes any thing 
he would deny to their curiosity. All that he 
found of this sort were some letters in female 
handwriting, tied together with faded ribbon, rel- 
ics of early days, and treasured throughout later 
vicissitudes ; letters from the English girl to 
whom he had briefly referred in his confession 
to Louvier — the only girl he had ever wooed as 
his wife. She was the only daughter of high- 
born Roman Catholics, residing at the time of 
his youth in Paris. Reluctantly they had as- 
sented to his proposals ; joyfully they had re- 
tracted their assent when his affairs had become 
so involved ; yet possibly the motive that led him 
to his most ruinous excesses — the gambling of the 
turf — had been caused by the wild hope of a na- 
ture, then fatally sanguine, to retrieve the fortune 
that might suffice to satisfy the parents. But 
during his permitted courtship the lovers had 
corresponded. Her letters were full of warm, 
if innocent, tenderness — till came the last cold 
farewell. The family had long ago returned to 
England ; he concluded, of course, that she had 
married anotlier. 

Near to these letters lay the papers which had 
served to vindicate his honor in that old affair, 
in which the unsought love of another had brought 
on him shame and affliction. As his eye fell on 
the last, he muttered to himself: “I kept tlies^ 
to clear niy repute. Can I keep those, when, if 
found, they might compromise the repute of her 
who might have been my wife had 1 been worthy 
of her? She is doubtless now another’s; or, 
if dead — honor never dies.” He pressed his lips 
to the letters with a passionate, lingering, mourn- 
ful kiss; then raking up the ashes of yester- 
day’s fire, and rekindling them, he placed thereon 
those leaves of a melancholy romance in his past, 
and watched them slowly, reluctantly smoulder 
away into tinder. Then he opened a drawer in 
which lay the only paper of a political character 
which he had preserved. All that related to 
plots or conspiracies in which his agency had 
committed others it was his habit to destroy as 
soon as received. For the sole document thus 
treasured he alone was responsible ; it was an 
outline of his ideal for the future constitution of 
France, accompanied with elaborate arguments, 
the hea<ls of which his conversation with the In- 
cognito made known to the reader. Of the 
soundness of tliis political programme, whatever 
its meiits or faults (a question on which I pre- 


THE PARISIANS. 


211 


sume no judgment), he had an intense convic- 
tion. He glanced rapidly over its contents, did 
not alter a word, sealed it up in an envelope, in- 
scribed, “ My Legacy to my Countrymen. ” The 
papers refuting a calumny relating solely to him- 
self he carried into the battle-field, ])laced next 
to his heart — significant of a Frenchman’s love 
of honor in this world — as the relic placed round 
the neck of Enguerrand by his pious brother was 
emblematic of the Christian hope of mercy in the 
next. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

The streets swarmed with the populace gaz- 
ing on the troops as they passed to their destina- 
tion. Among those of the Mobiles who especially 
caught the eye were two companies in which En- 
guerrand de Vandemar and Victor de Mauleon 
commanded. In the first were many young men 
of good family, or in the higher ranks of the 
hourgeoisie,^\\o\\n to numerous lookers-on ; there 
was something inspiriting in their gay aspects, 
and in the easy carelessness of their march. 
Mixed with this company, however, and form- 
ing of course the bulk of it, were those avIio be- 
longed to* the lower classes of the population ; 
and though they too might seem gay to an or- 
dinaiy observer, the gayety was forced. Many 
of them were evidently not quite sober; and 
there was a disorderly want of soldiership in 
their mien and armament which inspired distrust 
among such vieux moustaches as, too old for oth- 
er service than that of the ramparts, mixed here 
and there among the crowd. 

But when De Mauleon’s company passed, the 
vieux moustaches impulsively touched each oth- 
er. They recognized the march of well-drilled 
men, the countenances grave and severe, the 
eyes not looking on this side and that for admira- 
tion, the step regularly timed, and conspicuous 
among these men the tall stature and calm front 
of the leader. 

“These fellows will fight well,” growled a 
vieux moustache. “ Where did they fish out their 
leader ?” 

“ Don’t you know ?” said a bourgeois. “ Vic- 
tor de Mauleon. He won the cross in Algeria 
for bravery. I recollect him when I was very 
young ; the very devil for women and fight- 
ing.” 

“I wish there were more such devils for fight- 
ing and fewer for women,” growled again le 
vieux moustache 

One incessant roar of cannon all the night of 
the 29th. The populace had learned the names 
of the French cannons, and fancied they could 
distinguish the several sounds of their thunder. 
“There spits ‘Josephine!’” shouts an invalid 
sailor. “There howls our own ‘Populace!’”* 
cries a Red Republican from Belleville. “ There 
sings ‘Le Chatiment!’” laughed Gustave Ra- 
meau, who was now become an enthusiastic ad- 
mirer of the Victor Hugo he had before affected 
to despise. And all the while, mingled with the 
roar of the cannon, came, fiir and near, from the 
streets, from the ramparts, the gusts of song — 
song sometimes heroic, sometimes obscene, more 


* The “ Populace” had been contributed to the artil- 
lery, sou d sou, by the working class. 


often carelessly joyous. The news of General 
Vinoy’s success during the early part of the day 
had been damped by the evening report of Du- 
crot’s delay in crossing the swollen Marne. But 
the spirits of the Parisians rallied from a moment- 
ary depression on the excitement at night of that 
concert of martial music. 

During that night, close under the guns of the 
double redoubt of Gravelle and La Faisanderie, 
eight pontoon - bridges were thrown over the 
Marne ; and at daybreak the first column of the 
third army under Blanchard and Renoult crossed 
with all their artillery, and, covered by the fire 
of the double redoubts, of the forts of Vincennes, 
Nogent, Rossney, and the batteries of Mont Av- 
ron, had an hour before noon carried the village 
of Champigny, and the first echelon of the im- 
portant plateau of Villiers, and were already 
commencing the work of intrenchment, when, 
rallying from the amaze of a defeat, the Ger- 
man forces burst upon them, sustained by fresh 
batteries. The Prussian pieces of artillery estab- 
lished at Chennevieres and at Neuilly opened fire 
with deadly execution ; while a numerous infan- 
try, descending from the intrenchments of Vil- 
liers, charged upon the troops under Renoult. 
Among the French in that strife were Enguer- 
rand and the Mobiles of which he was in com- 
mand. Dismayed by the unexpected fire, these 
Mobiles gave way, as indeed did many of the line. 
Enguerrand rushed forward to the front — “On, 
mes enfans, on ! What will our mothers and 
wives say of us if we fly ? Vive la France ! 
On !” Among those of the better class in that 
company there rose a shout of applause, but it 
found no sympathy among the rest. They wa- 
vered ; they turned. “ Will you suffer me to go 
on alone, countrymen ?” cried Enguerrand ; and 
alone he rushed on toward the Prussian line — 
rushed, and fell, mortally wounded by a musket- 
ball. “Revenge! revenge!” shouted some of 
the foremost ; “ Revenge !” shouted those in the 
rear ; and, so shouting, turned on their heels and 
fled. But ere they could disperse they encount- 
ered the march, steadfast though rapid, of the 
troop led by Victor de Mauleon. “ Poltroons!” 
he thundered, with the sonorous depth of his 
strong voice, “halt and turn, or my men shall 
fire on you as deserters.” 

“ Fd, citoyen," said one fugitive, an officer — 
populary elected, because he was the loudest 
brawler in the club of the Salle Favre — we have 
seen him before — Charles, the brother of Ar- 
mand Monnier — “ men can’t fight when they de- 
spise their generals. It is our generals who are 
poltroons and fools both.” 

‘ ‘ Carry my answer to the ghosts of cowards ! ” 
cried De Mauleon, and shot the man dead. 

His followers, startled and cowed by the deed, 
and the voice and the look of the death-giver, 
halted. The officers, who had at first yielded to 
the panic of their men, took fresh courage, and 
finally led the bulk of the troop back to their post 

enlev^s a la haiionette," to use the phrase of a 
candid historian of that day. 

Day, on the whole, not inglorious to France. 
It was the first, if it was the last, really impor- 
tant success of the besieged. They remained 
masters of the ground, the Prussians leaving to 
them the wounded and the dead. 

That night what crowds thronged from Paris 
to the top of the Montmartre heights, from the 


212 


THE PARISIANS. 


observatory on which the celebrated inventor 
Bazin had lighted up, with some magical elec- 
tric machine, all the plain of Gennevilliers, from 
Mont Valerien to the Fort de la Briche ! The 
si)lendor of the blaze wrapped the great city ; 
distinctly above the roofs of the houses soared 
the Dome des Invalides, the spires of Notre 
Dame, the giant turrets of the Tuileries — and 
died away on resting on the infames scapulas 
Acroceraunia, the “ thunder crags” of the heights 
occupied by the invading army. 

Lemercier, De Breze, and the elder Rameau — 
who, despite his peaceful habits and gray hairs, 
insisted on joining in the aid of la patrie — w'ere 
among the National Guards attached to the Fort 
de la Briche and the neighboring eminence, and 
they met in conversation. 

“What a victory we have had!” said the old 
Rameau. 

“ Rather mortifying to your son, M. Rameau,”, 
said Lemercier. 

“Mortifying to my son. Sir! — the victory of 
his countrymen ! What do you mean ?” 

“I had the honor to hear M. Gustave the oth- 
er night at the club de la Vengeance.” 

“ Bon Dieu! do you frequent those tragic re- 
unions ?” asked De Breze. 

“They are not at all tragic : they are the only | 
comedies left us, as one must amuse one’s self 
somewhere, and the club de la Vengeance is the 
prettiest thing of the sort going. I quite under- 
stand why it should fascinate a poet like your 
son, M. Rameau. It is held in a salle de cafe 
chantant — style Louis Quinze — decorated with a 
pastoral scene from Watteau. I and my dog 
Fox drop in. We hear your sou haranguing. 
In what poetical sentences he despaired of the 
republic! The government (he called them les 
charlatans de V Hotel de Ville) were imbeciles. 
They pretended to inaugurate a revolution, and 
did not employ the most obvious of revolutionary 
means. There Fox and I pricked up our ears : 
what were those means ? Your son proceeded to 
explain : ‘All mankind were to be appealed to 
against individual interests. The commerce of 
luxury was to be abolished : clearly luxury was 
not at the command of all mankind. Cafes and 
theatres were to be closed forever — all mankind 
could not go to cafes and theatres. It was idle 
to expect the masses to combine for any thing in 
which the masses had not an interest in common. 
The masses had no interest in any property that 
did not belong to the masses. Programmes of 
the society to be founded, called the Ligue Cos- 
mopolite jD^mocratique, should be sent at once 
into all the states of the civilized world — how? 
by balloons. Money corrupts the world as now* 
composed ; but the money at the command of 
the masses could buy all the monarchs and court- 
iers and priests of the universe.’ At that senti- 
ment, vehemently delivered, the applauses w-ere 
frantic, and Fox in his excitement began to bark. 
At the sound of his bark one man cried out, 
‘That’s a Prussian!’ another, ‘Dowm with the 
spy !’ another, ‘ There’s an aristo present — he 
keeps alive a dog which would be a week’s meal 
for a family !’ I snatch up Fox at the last cry, 
and clasp him to a bosom protected by the uni- 
form of the National Guard. 

“When the hubbub had subsided, your son, 
M, Rameau, proceeded, quitting mankind in gen- 
eral, and arriving at the question in particular 


most interesting to his audience — the mobiliza- 
tion of the National Guard ; that is, the call upon 
men who like talking and hate fighting to talk 
less and fight more. ‘ It was the sheerest tyr- 
anny to select a certain number of free citizens 
to be butchered. If the fight w'as for the mass, 
there ought to be la levee en masse. If one did 
not compel every body to fight, why should any 
body fight ?’ Here the applause again became 
vehement, and Fox again became indiscreet. 1 
subdued Fox’s bark into a squeak by pulling his 
ears. ‘ What !’ cries your poet-son, ‘ la levee en 
masse gives us fifteen millions of soldiers, with 
which we could crush not Prussia alone, but the 
Avhole of Europe.’ (Immense sensation.) ‘Let 
us, then, resolve that the charlatans of the Hotel 
de Ville are incapable of delivering us from the 
Prussians ; that they are deposed ; that the Ligtie 
of the Democratie Cosmopolite is installed ; that 
meanwhile the Commune shall be voted the pro- 
visional government, and shall order the Prus- 
sians to retire within three days from the soil of 
Paris.’ 

“ Pardon me thi§ long description my dear 
M. Rameau ; but I trust I have satisfactorily 
explained why victory obtained in the teeth of 
his eloquent opinions, if gratifying to him as a 
Frenchman, must be mortifying to him as a pol- 
itician.” 

The old Rameau sighed, hung his head, and 
crept away. 

While, amidst this holiday illumination, the 
Parisians enjoyed the panorama before them, the 
Freres Chretiens the attendants of the various 
ambulances were moving along the battle-plains ; 
the first in their large-brimmed hats and sable 
garbs, the last in strange motley costume, many 
of them in glittering uniform — all alike in their 
serene indifference to danger, often pausing to 
pick up among the dead their own brethren who 
had been slaughtered in the midst of their task. 
Now and then they came on sinister forms appar- 
ently engaged in the same duty of tending the 
wounded and dead, but in truth murderous plun- 
derers, to whom the dead and the dying were 
equal harvests. Did the wounded man attempt 
to resist the foul hands searching for their spoil, 
they added another wound more immediately 
mortal, grinning as they completed on the dead 
the robbery they had commenced on the dying. 

Raoul de Vandemar had been all the earlier 
part of the day with the assistants of the ambu- 
lance over which he presided, attached to the 
battalions of the National Guard in a quarter re- 
mote from that in which his brother had fought 
and fallen. When those troops, later in the day, 
were driven from the Montmedy plateau, which 
they had at first carried, Raoul repassed toward 
the plateau at Villiers, on which the dead lay 
thickest. On the way he heard a vague report 
of the panic which had dispersed the Mobiles of 
whom Enguerrand was in command, and of En- 
guerrand’s vain attempt to inspirit them. But 
his fate was not known. 

There, at midnight, Raoul is still searching 
among the ghastly heaps and pools of blood, 
lighted from afar by the blaze from the observa- 
tory of Montmartre, and more near at hand by 
the bivouac fires extended along the banks to the 
left of the Marne, while every where about the 
field flitted the lanterns of the Freres Chretiens. 
Suddenly, in the dimness of a spot cast into shad- 





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HE SPKAI^G FORWARD AND SEIZED A 1IIDEOD8-LOOKINO ITROIIIN, 60AR0EEY TWELVE YEARS OLD, WHO HELD IN ONE HAND A 
SMALL CRYSTAL LOOKET, SET IN FILIGREE GOLD, TORN FROM THE SOLDIER’S BREAST, AND LIFTED HIGH IN THE OTHER A I.ONG 
CASE-KNIFE. 









THE PAlilSIANS. 


o\v by an incompleted earth-work, he observed a 
small sinister figure perched on the breast of some 
wounded soldier, evidently not to succor. He 
sprang forward and seized a hideous-looking ur- 
chin, scarcely twelve years old, who held in one 
hand a small crystal locket, set in filigree gold, 
torn from the soldier’s breast, and lifted high in 
the other a long case-knife. At a glance Raoul 
recognized the holy relic he had given to Enguei*- 
rand, and, flinging the precocious murderer to be 
seized by his assistants, he cast himself beside 
his brother. Enguerrand still breathed, and his 
languid eyes brightened as he knew the dear fa- 
miliar face. He tried to speak, but his voice 
failed, and he shook his head sadly, but still 
with a faint smile on his lips. They lifted him 


213 

tenderly, and placed him on a litter. The move- 
ment, gentle as it was, brought back pain, and 
with the pain strength to mutter, “ My mother — 
I would see her once more.” 

As at daybreak the loungers on Montmartre 
and the ramparts descended into the streets — 
most windows in which were open, as they had 
been all night, with anxious female faces peering 
palely down — they saw the conveyances of the 
ambulances coming dismally along, and many an 
eye turned wistfully toward the litter on which 
lay the idol of the pleasure-loving Paris, with the 
dark, bare-headed figure walking beside it — on- 
ward, onward, till it reached the Hotel de Van- 
demar, and a woman’s cry was heard at the en- 
trance — the mother’s cry — “My son! my son!” 


BOOK TWELF.TH. 


CHAPTER I. 

The last book closed with the success of the 
Parisian sortie on the 30th of November, to be 
followed by the terrible engagements, no less 
honorable to French valor, on the 2d of Decem- 
ber. There was the sanguine belief that deliver- 
ance was at hand; that Trochu would break 
through the circle of iron, and effect that junc- 
tion with the army of Aurelles de Paladine which 
would compel the Germans to raise the invest- 
ment — belief rudely shaken by Ducrot’s procla- 
mation of the 4th, to explain the recrossing of 
the Marne, and the abandonment of the positions 
conquered, but not altogether dispelled till Von 
Moltke’s letter to Trochu, on the 5th, announ- 
cing the defeat of the Army of the Loire and the 
recapture of Orleans. Even then the Parisians 
did not lose hope of succor ; and even after the 
desperate and fruitless sortie against Le Bour- 
get, on the 21st, it was not without witticisms 
on defeat and predictions of triumph that Winter 
and Famine settled sullenly on the city. ' 

Our narrative re-opens with the last period of 
the siege. 

It was during these dreadful days that if the 
vilest and the most hideous aspects of the Pa- 
risian population showed themselves at the worst, 
so all its loveliest, its noblest, its holiest char- 
acteristics — unnoticed by ordinary observers in 
the prosperous days of the capital — became con- 
spicuously prominent. The higher classes, in- 
cluding the remnant of the old noblesse, had dur- 
ing the whole siege exhibited qualities in notable 
contrast to those assigned them by the enemies 
of aristocracy. Their sons had been foremost 
among those soldiers who never calumniated a 
leader, never fled before a foe ; their women had 
been among the most zealous and the most ten- 
der nurses of the ambulances they had founded 
and served ; their houses had been freely opened, 
whether to the families exiled from the suburbs, 
or in supplement to the liospitals. The amount 
of relief they aflbrded unostentatiously, out of 
means that shared the general failure of accus- 
tomed resource, when the famine commenced, 
would be scarcely credible if stated. Admirable, 
too, were the fortitude and resignation of the 
genuine Parisian bourgeoisie — the thrifty trades- 


folk and small rentiers — that class in which, to 
judge of its timidity when opposed to a mob, 
courage is not the most conspicuous virtue. Cour- 
age became so now — courage to bear hourly in- 
creasing privation, and to suppress every mur- 
mur of suffering that would discredit their patri- 
otism, and invoke ‘ ‘ peace at any price. ” It was 
on this class that the calamities of the siege now 
pressed the most heavily. The stagnation of 
trade, and the stoppage of the rents, in which 
they had invested their savings, reduced many 
of them to actual want. Those only of their 
number who obtained the pay of one and a half 
francs a day as National Guards could be sure 
to escape from starvation. But this pay had al- 
ready begun to demoralize the receivers. Scanty 
for supply of food, it was ample for supply of 
drink. And drunkenness, hitherto rare in that 
rank of the Parisians, became a prevalent vice, 
aggravated in the case of a National Guard when 
it wholly unfitted him for the duties he under- 
took, especially such National Guards as were 
raised from the most turbulent democracy of the 
working class. 

But of that population there were two sec- 
tions in which the most beautiful elements of 
our human nature were most touchingly manifest 
— the women and the priesthood, including in 
the latter denomination all the various brother- 
hoods and societies which religion formed and 
inspired. 

It was on the 27th of December that Frederic 
Lemercier stood gazing wistfully on a military 
report affixed to a blank wall, which stated that 
“the enemy, worn out by a resistance of over 
one hundred days,” had commenced the bom- 
bardment. Poor Frederic was sadly altered; 
he had escaped the Prussian guns, but not the 
Parisian winter — the severest known for twenty 
years. He was one of the many frozen at their 
posts — brought back to the ambulance with Fox 
in his bosom trying to keep him warm. He had 
only lately been sent forth as convalescent — am- 
bulances were too crowded to retain a patient 
longer than absolutely needful — and had been 
hunger-pinched and frost- pinched ever since. 
The luxurious Frederic had still, somewhere or 
other, a capital yielding above three thousand a 
year, and of which he could not now realize a 


214 


THE PARISIANS. 


franc, the title-deeds to various investments be- 
ing in the liands of Diiplessis — the most trust- 
worthy of friends, the most upright of men, but 
who was in Bretagne, and could not be got at. 
And the time had come at Paris when you could 
not get trust for a pound of horse-flesh, or a daily 
supply of fuel. And Frederic Lemercier, who had 
long since spent the 2000 francs borrowed from 
Alain (not ignobly, but somewhat ostentatiously, 
in feasting any acquaintance who wanted a feast), 
and who had sold to any one who could afford 
to speculate on such dainty luxuries, clocks, 
bronzes, amber- mouthed pipes — all that had 
made the envied garniture of his bachelor’s apart- 
ment — Frederic Lemercier was, so far as the 
task of keeping body and soul together, worse 
off’ than any English pauper who can apply to 
the Union. Of course he might have claimed 
his half-pay of thirty sous as a National Guard. 
But he little knows the true Parisian who im- 
agines a seigneur of the Chaussee d’Andn, the 
oracle of those with whom he lived,'and one who 
knew life so well that he had preached prudence 
to a seigneur of the fabourg like Alain de Roche- 
briant, stooping to apply for the wages of thirty 
sous. Rations were only obtained by the won- 
derful patience of women, who liad children to 
whom they were both saints and martyrs. The 
hours, the weary hours, one had to wait before 
one could get one’s place on tlie line for the dis- 
tribution of that atrocious black bread defeated 
men — defeated most wives if only for husbands 
— were defied only by mothers and daughters. 
Literally speaking, Lemercier was starving. Alain 
had been badly wounded in the sortie of the 21st, 
and was laid up in an ambulance. Even if he 
could have been got at, he had probably nothing 
left to bestow upon Lemercier. 

Lemercier gazed on the announcement of the 
bombardment — and the Parisian gayety, which 
some French historian of the siege calls douce 
}>k{losophie, lingering on him still, he said, audi- 
bly, turning round to any stranger who heard : 
“Happiest of mortals that we are! Under the 
present government we are never warned of any 
thing disagreeable that can happen ; we are only 
told of it when it has happened, and then as 
rather pleasant than otherwise. I get up. I 
meet a civil gendarme. ‘What is that firing? 
which of our provincial armies is taking Prussia 
in the rear?’ ‘Monsieur,’ says the gendarme, 
‘it is the Prussian Krupp guns.’ I look at the 
proclamations, and my fears vanish — my heart is 
relieved. I read that the bombardment is a sure 
sign that the enemy is worn out.” 

Some of the men grouped round Frederic 
ducked their heads in terror ; others, who knew 
that the thunder- bolt launched from the plateau 
of Avron would not fall on the pavements of 
Paris, laughed and joked. But in front, with 
no sign of terror, no sound of laughter, stretched, 
moving inch by inch, the female procession to- 
ward the bakery in which the morsel of bread 
for their infants was doled out. 

“Hist, mon ami,” said a deep voice beside 
Lemercier. “Look at those women, and do 
not wound their ears by a jest.” 

Lemercier, olFended by thal rebuke, though 
too susceptible to good emotions not to recognize 
its justice, tried with feeble fingers to turn up 
his moustache, and to turn a defiant crest upon 
the rebuker. He was rather startled to see the 


tall martial form at his side, and to recognize 
Victor de Mauleon. “ Don’t you think, M. Le- 
mercier,” resumed the Vicomte, half sadly, “ that 
these women are worthy of better husbands and 
sons than are commonly found among the sol- 
diers whose uniform we wear ?” 

“The National Guard I You ought not to 
sneer at them, Vicomte — you whose troop cover- 
ed itself with glory on the great days of Villiers 
and Champigny — you in whose praise even the 
grumblers of Paris became eloquent, and in 
whom a future Marshal of France is foretold.” 

‘ ‘ But, alas ! more than half of my poor troop 
was left on the battle-field, or is now wrestling 
for mangled remains of life in the ambulances. 
And the new recruits with which I took the field 
on the 21st are not likely to cover themselves 
with glory, or insure to their commander the 
baton of a marshal.” 

“ Ay, I heard when I was in the hospital that 
you had publicly shamed some of these recruits, 
and declared that you would rather resign than 
lead them again to battle.” 

“True; and at this moment, for so doing, I 
am the man most hated by the- rabble who sup- 
plied those recruits.” 

The men, while thus conversing, had moved 
slowly on, and were now in front of a large cafe, 
from the interior of which came the sound of 
loud bravos and clappings of hands. Lemer- 
cier’s curiosity was excited. “ For what can be 
that applause?” he said. “Let us look in and 
see.” 

The room was thronged. In the distance, on 
a small raised platform, stood a girl dressed in 
faded theatrical finery, making her obeisance to 
the crowd. 

‘ ‘ Heavens I ” exclaimed F rederic ; ‘ ‘ can I trust 
my eyes ? Surely that is the once superb Julie : 
has she been dancing here ?” 

One of the loungers, evidently belonging to 
the same world as Lemercier, overheard the, 
question, and answered, politely, “No, mon- 
sieur : she has been reciting verses, and really 
declaims very well, considering it is not her vo- 
cation. She has given us extracts from Victor 
Hugo and De Musset, and crowned all with a 
patriotic hymn by Gustave Rameau — her old 
lover, if gossip be true.” 

Meanwhile De Mauleon, who at first had 
glanced over the scene with his usual air of calm 
and cold indifference, became suddenly struck 
by the girl’s beautiful fiice, and gazed on it with 
a look of startled surprise. 

“Who and what did you say that poor fair 
creature is, M. Lemercier?” 

“She is a Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin, and 
was a very popular coryphee. She has hereditary 
right to be a good dancer as the daughter of a 
once more fomous ornament of the ballet, la 
belle Leonie — whom you must have seen in your 
young days.” 

“ Of course. Leonie — she manied a M. Sur- 
ville, a silly bourgeois gentilhomme, who earned 
the hatred of Paris by taking her off the stage. 
So that is her daughter ! 1 see no likeness to 

her mother — much handsomer. Why does she 
call herself Caumartin ?” 

“Oh,” said Frederic, “a melancholy but trite 
story. Leonie was left a widow, and died in 
want. What could the poor young daughter 
do? She found a rich protector who had influ- 


THE PARISIANS. 


215 


ence to get her an appointment in the ballet : 
and there she did as most girls so circumstanced 
do — appeared under an assumed name, which 
she has since kept.” 

“I understand,! said Victor, compassionately. 
“Poor thing! she has quitted the platform, and 
is coming this way, evidently to speak to you. 
1 saw her eyes brighten as she caught sight of 
your face.” 

Lemercier attempted a languid air of modest 
self-complacency as tlie girl now approached 
him. “jBoujoar, M. Frederic ! Ah, vion Dieu ! 
how thin you have grown ! You have been 
ill?” 

“The hardships of a military life, mademoi- 
selle. Ah, for the beaux jours and the peace we 
insisted on destroying under the empire which 
we destroyed for listening to us I But you thrive 
well, I trust. I have seen you better dressed, 
but never in greater beauty.” 

The girl blushed as she replied, “ Do you real- 
ly think as you speak ?” 

“ I could not speak more sincerely if I lived in 
the legendary House of Glass.” 

The girl clutched his arm, and said, in sup- 
pressed tones, “ Where is Gustave?” 

“ Gustave Rameau ? I have no idea. Do you 
never see him now ?” 

“ Never — perhaps I never shall see him again ; 
but w'hen you do meet him, say that Julie owes 
to him her livelihood. An honest livelihood, 
monsieur. He taught her to love verses — told 
her how to recite them. I am engaged at this 
cafe — you will find me here the same hour every 
day, in case — in case — You are good and kind, 
and will come and tell me that Gustave is well 
and happy even if he forgets me. Au revoir. 
Stop; you do not look, my poor Frederic, as if 
— as if — Pardon me. Monsieur Lemercier, is 
there any thing I can do ? . Will you condescend 
to borrow from me? I am in funds.” 

, Lemercier at that ofier was nearl}'^ moved to 
tears. Famished though he was, he could not, 
however, have touched that girl’s earnings. 

“ You are an angel of goodness, mademoiselle! 
Ah, how I envy Gustave Rameau ! No, I don’t 
want aid. I am always a — rentier f 

Bien! and if you see Gustave you will not 
forget?” 

“ Rely on me. — Come away,” he said to De 
Mauleon. “I don’t w'ant to hear that girl re- 
peat the sort of bombast the poets indite nowa- 
days. It is fustian ; and that girl may have a 
brain of feather, but she has a heart of gold.” 

“True,” said Victor, as they regained the 
street. “ I overheard what she said to you. 
What an incomprehensible thing is a woman ! 
how more incomprehensible still is a woman’s 
love ! Ah, pardon me. I must leave you ; I 
see in the procession a poor woman known to me 
in better days.” 

De Mauleon w'alked toward the woman he 
spoke of — one of the long procession to the 
bakeiy — a child clinging to her robe. A pale 
grief- worn w'oman, still young, but with the wea- 
riness of age on her face, and the shadow of 
death on her child’s. 

“I think I see Madame Monnier,” said De 
Mauleon, softly. 

She turned and looked at him drearily. A 
year ago she would have blushed if addressed by 
a stranger in a name not lawfully hers. 


“ Well,” she said, in hollow accents broken by 
cough ; “ I don’t know you, monsieur.” 

“Poor woman,” he resumed, walking beside 
her as she moved slowly on, while the eyes of 
other Avomen in the procession stared at him 
hungrily. “ And your child looks ill, too. Is it 
your youngest ?” 

“My only one! The others are in Pere la 
Chaise. There are but few children alive in my 
street now. God has been very merciful, and 
taken them to Himself.” 

De Mauleon recalled the scene of a neat, com- 
fortable apartment, and the healthful, happy chil- 
dren at play on the floor. The mortality among 
the little ones, especially in the quartier occupied 
by the working classes, had of late been terrible. 
The want of food, of fuel, the intense severity 
of the weather, had swept them off' as by a pesti- 
lence. 

“ And Monnier — what of him ? No doubt he 
is a National Guard, and has his pay.” 

The w’oman made no answer, but hung down 
her head. She was stifling a sob. Till then her 
eyes seemed to have exhausted the last source of 
tears. 

“He lives still?” continued Victor, pityingly; 
“ he is not wounded?” 

“ No ; he is well — in health, thank you kind- 
ly, monsieur.” 

“But his pay is not enough to help you, and 
of course he can get no work. Excuse me if I 
stopped you. It is because I owed Armand 
Monnier a little debt for work, and I am ashamed 
to say that it quite escaped my memory in these 
terrible events. Allow me, madam e, to pay it to 
you ;” and he thrust his purse into her hand. “ I 
think this contains about the sum I owed ; if 
more or less, we will settle the difference later. 
Take care of yourself.” 

He was turning away, when the woman caught 
hold of him. 

“ Stay, monsieur. IMay Heaven bless you ! — 
but — but — tell me what name I am to give to Ar- 
mand. I can’t think of any one who owed him 
money. It must have been before that dreadful 
strike, the beginning of all our woes. Ah, if it 
were allowed to curse any one, I fear my last 
breath would not be a prayer.” 

“You would curse the strike, or the master 
who did not forgive Armand’s share in it ?” 

“No, no — the cruel man who talked him into 
it — into all that has changed the best workman, 
the kindest heart — the — the — ” Again her voice 
died in sobs. 

‘ ‘ And who was that man ?” asked De Mau- 
leon, falteringly. 

“ His name w'as Lebeau. If you were a poor 
man, I should say, ‘Shun him.’ ” 

“ I have heard of the name you mention ; but 
if we mean the same person, Monnier can not 
have met him lately. He has not been in Paris 
since the siege.” 

“I suppose not, the coward! He ruined us 
— us who were so happy before ; and then, as 
Armand says, cast us away as instruments he 
had done with. But — but if you do know him, 
and do see him again, tell him — tell him not to 
complete his wrong — not to bring murder on Ar- 
mand’s soul. For Armand isn’t what he was — 
and has become — oh, so violent ! I dare not take 
this money without saying who gave it. He 
would not take money as alms from an aristo- 


21G 


THE PAKISIANS. 


crat. Hush ! he beat me foi' taking money from 
the good Monsieur Kaoul de Vandemar — my 
poor Armand beat me !” 

De Mauleon shuddered. “Say that it is from 
a customer whose rooms he decorated in his spare 
hours on his own account before the strike — Mon- 
sieur Here he uttered indistinctly some 

unpronounceable name, and hurried off, soon lost 
as the streets grew darker. Amidst groups of a 
higher order of men — military men, nobles, ci- 
devant deputies — among such ones his name 
stood very higli. Not only his bravery in the 
recent sorties had been signal, but a strong be- 
lief in his military talents had ])ecome prevalent ; 
and conjoined with the name he had before es- 
tablished as a political writer, and the remem- 
brance of the vigor and sagacity with which he 
had opposed the war, he seemed certain, when 
peace and order became re-established, of a brill- 
iant position and career in a future administra- 
tion : not less because he had steadfastly kept 
aloof from the existing government, which it was 
rumored, rightly or erroneously, that he had been 
solicited to join, and from every combination of 
the various democratic or discontented factions. 

Quitting these more distinguished associates, 
he took his way alone toward the ramparts. The 
day was closing ; the thunders of the cannon 
were dying down. 

He passed by a wine-shop round which -were 
gathered many of the worst specimens of the 
Mohlots and National Guards, mostly drunk, 
and loudly talking, in vehement abuse of gener- 
als and officers and commissariat. By one of 
the men, as he came under the glare of a petro- 
leum lamp (there was gas no longer in the dis- 
mal city), he was recognized as the commander 
who had dared to insist on discipline, and dis- 
grace honest patriots who claimed to themselves 
the sole option between fight and flight. The 
man was one of those patriots — one of the new 
recruits whom Victor had shamed and dismiss- 
ed for mutiny and cowardice. He made a drunk- 
en plunge at his former chief, shouting, “A has 
Varisto! Comrades, this is the coquin De Mau- 
leon who is paid by the Prussians for getting us 
killed : a la lanterne !” ‘‘'‘Ala lanterne /” stam- 

mered and hiccuped others of the group ; but 
they did not stir to execute their threat. Dim- 
ly seen as the stern face and sinewy foi*m of the 
threatened man was by their drowsied eyes, the 
name of De Mauleon, the man without fear of 
a foe, and without ruth for a mutineer, sufficed 
to protect him from outrage ; and with a slight 
movement of his arm that sent his denouncer 
reeling against a lamp-post, De Mauleon passed 
on — when another man, in the uniform of a Na- 
tional Guard, bounded from the door of the tav- 
ern, ciwing, with a loud voice, “Who said De 
Mauleon? — let me look at him.” And Victor, 
who had strode on with slow lion-like steps, cleav- 
ing the crowd, turned, and saw before him in the 
gleaming light a face in which the bold, frank, 
intelligent aspect of former days was lost in a 
wild, reckless, savage expression — the face of 
Armand Monnier. 

“Ha! are you really Victor de Mauleon?” 
asked Monnier, not fiercely, but under his breath 
— in that sort of stage whisper w'hich is the nat- 
tural utterance of excited men under the mingled 
influence of potent drink and hoarded rage. 

“Certainly ; I am Victor de Mauleon.” 


“And you were in command of the com- 

pany of the National Guard on the 30th of No- 
vember at Champigny and Villiers ?” 

“ I was.” 

“And you shot with your ^wn hand an offi- 
cer belonging to another company who refused 
to join yours ?” 

‘ ‘ I shot a cowardly soldier who ran aw^ay from 
the enemy, and seemed a ringleader of other run- 
aways ; and in so doing, I saved from dishonor 
the best part of his comrades.” 

“The man was no coward. He was an en- 
lightened Frenchman, and worth fifty of such 
aristas as you ; and he knew better than his of- 
ficers that he was to be led to an idle slaughter. 
Idle — I say idle. What was France the better, 
how was Paris the safer, for the senseless butch- 
ery of that day? You mutinied against a wiser 
general than Saint Trochu when you murdered 
that mutineer.” 

“Armand Monnier, you are not quite sober 
to-night, or I would argue with you that ques- 
tion. But you, no doubt, are brave. How' and 
why do you take the part of a runaway ?” 

‘ ‘ How and why ? He was my brother, and 
you own you murdered him : my brother — the 
sagest head in Paris. If I had listened to him, 1 
should not be — bah I — no matter now what I am.” 

“ I could not know he was your brother ; but 
if he had been mine I would have done the same.” 

Here Victor’s lip quivered, for Monnier griped 
him by the arm, and looked him in the face with 
wild stony eyes. 

“I recollect that voice! Yet — yet — you say 
you are a noble, a Vicomte — Victor de Mau- 
le'on! and you shot my brother!” 

Here he passed his left hand rapidly over his 
forehead. The fumes of wine still clouded his 
mind, but rays of intelligence broke through the 
cloud. Suddenly he said, in a loud and calm 
and natural voice, 

“ M. le Vicomte, you accost me as Armand 
Monnier. Pray, how do you know my name?” 

‘ '• How should I not know it ? I have looked 
into the meetings of the ‘ clubs rouges. ’ I have 
heard you speak, and naturally asked your name. 
Bonsoir, M. Monnier ! When you reflect in cool- 
er moments, you will see that if patriots ex- 
cuse Brutus for first dishonoring and then exe- 
cuting his own son, an officer charged to defend 
his country may be surely pardoned for slaying 
a runaway to whom he was no relation, when in 
slaying he saved the man’s name and kindred 
from dishonor, unless, indeed, you insist on tell- 
ing the world why he was slain.” 

“ I know your voice — I know it. Every sound 
becomes clearer to my ear. And if — ” 

But while Monnier thus spoke, De Maule'on 
had hastened on. Monnier looked round, saw 
him gone, but did not pursue. He was just in- 
toxicated enough to know that his footsteps were 
not steady, and he turned back to the wine-shop 
and asked surlily for more wine. 

Could you have seen him then as he leaned, 
swinging himself to and fro, against the wall — 
had you known the man two years ago, you 
would have been a brute if you felt disgust. 
You could only have felt that profound compas- 
sion with which we gaze on a great royalty fall- 
en. For the grandest of all royalties is that 
which takes its crown from Nature, needing no 
accident of birth. And Nature made the mind 


THE PARISIANS. 


217 


of Armand Monnier king-like ; endowed it with 
lofty scorn of meanness and falsehood and dishon- 
or, with Avarmth and tenderness of heart which 
had glow enough to spare from ties of kindred 
and hearth and home to extend to those distant 
circles of humanity over which royal natures 
would fain extend the shadow of their sceptre. 

How had the royalty of the man’s nature fall- 
en thus ? Royalty rarely falls from its own con- 
stitutional faults. It falls when, ceasing to be 
royal, it becomes subservient to bad advisers. 
And what bad advisers, ahvays appealing to his 
better qualities and so enlisting his worser, had 
discrowned this mechanic? 

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” 

says the old-fashioned poet. “Not so,” says 
the modern philosopher; “a little knowdedge is 
safer than no knowledge.” Possibly, as all in- 
dividuals and all communities must go through 
the stage of a little knowledge before they can 
arrive at that of much knowledge, the philoso- 
pher’s assertion may be right in the long-run, 
and applied to humankind in general. But there 
is a period, as there is a class, in which a lit- 
tle knowledge tends to terrible demoralization. 
And Armand Monnier lived in that period and 
Avas one of that class. The little knoAvledge that 
his mind, impulsRe and ardent, had picked up 
out of books that Avarred Avith the great founda- 
tions of existing society had originated in ill ad- 
vices. A man stored Avith much knoAvledge Avould 
never have let Madame de Grantmesnil’s denun- 
ciations of marriage rites, or Louis Blanc’s vin- 
dication of Robespierre as the representative of 
the Avorking against the middle class, influence 
his practical life. He Avould have assessed such 
opinions at their real Avorth, and, AvhateA’er that 
Avorth might seem to him, would not to such 
opinions haA^e committed the conduct of his life. 
Opinion is not fateful: conduct is. A little 
knoAvledge crazes an earnest, warm-blooded, 
poAverful creature like Armand Monnier into a 
fanatic. He takes an opinion Avhich pleases him 
as a rcA’elation from the gods ; that opinion 
shapes his conduct; that conduct is his fate. 
Woe to the philosopher Avho serenely flings be- 
fore the little knoAvledge of the artisan dogmas 
as harmless as the Atlantis of Plato, if only to be 
discussed by philosophers, and deadly as the 
torches of Ate, if seized as articles of a creed by 
fanatics! But thrice Avoe to the artisan Avho 
makes himself the zealot of the Dogma ! 

Poor Armand acts on the opinions he adopts ; 
proves his contempt for the marriage state by liv- 
ing Avith the Avife of another ; resents, as natures 
so inherently manly must do, the Society that A'is- 
its on her his defiance of its laAvs ; throAvs him- 
self, head-foremost, against that Society altogeth- 
er ; necessarily joins all Avho have other reasons 
for hostility to Society ; he himself having every 
inducement not to join indiscriminate strikes — 
high wages, a liberal employer, ample savings, 
the certainty of soon becoming employer himself. 
No ; that is not enough to the fanatic : he per- 
sists on being dupe and victim. He, this great 
king of labor, croAvned by Nature, and cursed 
Avith that degree of little knoAvledge Avhich does 
not comprehend how much more is required be- 
fore a school-boy Avould admit it to be knoAvledge 
at all — he rushes into the maddest of all specula- 
tions — that of the artisan Avith little knowledge 


and enorm.ous faith — that Avhich intrusts the safe- 
ty and repose and dignity of life to some ambi- 
tious adventurer, Avho uses his Avarm heart for 
the adventurer’s frigid purpose, much as the laAv- 
yer-government of September used the Commu- 
nists — much as, in every revolution of France, a 
Bertrand had used a Raton — much as, till the 
sound of the last trumpet, men very much Avorse 
than Victor de Mauleon Avill use men very much 
better than Armand Monnier, if the Armand 
Monniers disdain the modesty of an Isaac Ncav- 
ton on hearing that a theorem to Avhich he had 
given all the strength of his patient intellect Avas 
disputed. “ It may be so ;” meaning, I suppose, 
that it requires a large amount of experience as- 
certained before a man of much knoAvledge be- 
comes that which a man of little knoAvledge is at 
a jump — the fanatic of an experiment untried. 

-♦ 

CHAPTER II. 

ScAKCELT had De Mauleon quitted Lemercier 
before the latter Avas joined by two loungers scarce* 
Ia”^ less famished than himself — Savarin and De 
Breze. Like himself, too, both had been suffer- 
ers from illness, though not of a nature to be 
consigned to a hospital. All manner of diseases 
then had combined to form the pestilence which 
filled the streets with unregarded hearses — bron- 
chitis, pneumonia, small-pox, a strange sort of 
spurious dysentery much more speedily fatal than 
the genuine. The three men, a year before so 
sleek, looked Kke ghosts under the withering sky ; 
yet all three retained embers of the native Paris- 
ian humor, Avhich their very breath on meeting 
sufficed to kindle up into jubilant sparks or rapid 
flashes. 

“There are tAVO consolations,” said Savarin, 
as the friends strolled, or rather crawled, toward 
the Boulevards — “two consolations for the gour- 
viet and for the proprietor in these days of trial 
for the gourmand, because the price of truffles is 
come doAAm.” 

“Truffles!” gasped De Breze, Avith AA^atering 
mouth; “impossible! They are gone Avith the 
age of gold.” 

“ Not so. I speak on the best authority — my 
laundress ; for she attends the succursale in the 
Rue de Chateaudun ; and if the poor Avoman, 
being, luckily for me, a childless Avidow, gets a 
morsel she can spare, she sells it to me.” 

“ Sells it! ” feebly exclaimed Lemercier. “Croe- 
sus ! you haA’e money, then, and can buy?” 

“ Sells it — on credit ! I am to pension her for 
life if I live to have money again. Don’t inter- 
rupt me. This honest Avoman goes this morning 
to the succursale. I promise myself a delicious 
hifteck of horse. She gains the succursale., and 
the employe informs her that there is nothing left 
in his store except — truffles. A glut of those in 
the market alloAvs him to offer her a bargain — 
seven francs la boite. Send me seven francs, De 
Breze, and you shall sliare the banquet.” 

De Breze shook his head expressiA^ely. 

“But,” resumed Savarin, “though credit ex- 
ists no more except Avith my laundress, upon 
terms of Avhicli the usury is necessarily propor- 
tioned to the risk, yet, as I had the honor before 
to obseiwe, there is comfort for the proprietor. 
The instinct of property is imperishable.” 


218 


THE PARISIANS. 


“Not in the house where I lodge,” said Le- 
mei'cier. “ Two soldiers were billeted there ; 
and during my stay in the ambulance they enter 
my rooms and cart away all of the little furniture 
left there, except a bed and a table. Brought 
before a court-martial, they defend themselves 
by saying, ‘The rooms were abandoned.’ The 
excuse was held valid. They were let off with 
a reprimand, and a promise to restore what was 
not already disposed of. They have restored me 
another table and four chairs.” 

“Nevertheless they had the instinct of prop- 
erty, though erroneously developed, otherwise 
they would not have deemed any excuse for their 
act necessary. Now for my instance of the in- 
herent tenacity of that instinct. A worthy citi- 
zen in want of fuel sees a door in a garden wall, 
and naturally carries off the door. He is appre- 
hended by a gendarme who sees the act. ‘ Vo- 
leur,' he cries to the gendarme, ‘do you want to 
rob me of my property ?’ ‘ That door your prop- 

erty ? I saw you take it away.’ ‘ You confess,’ 
cries the citizen, triumphantly — ‘you confess that 
it is my property ; for you saw me appropriate it.’ 
'I'hus you see how imperishable is the instinct of 
property. No sooner does it disappear as yours 
than it re-appears as mine.” 

“1 would laugh if I could,” said Lemercier, 
“but such a convulsion would be fatal. Dleii 
des dieux, how empty I am !” He reeled as he 
spoke, and clung to De Bre'ze for support. De 
Breze had the reputation of being the most self- 
ish of men. But at that moment, when a gen- 
erous man might be excused for being selfish' 
enough to desire to keep the little that he had 
for his own reprieve from starvation, this egotist 
became superb. “Eriends,” he cried, with en- 
thusiasm, “I have something yet in my pocket : 
we will dine, all three of us.” 

“Dine!” faltered Lemercier. “Dine! I have 
not dined since I left the hospital. I breakfast- 
ed yesterday — on two mice upon toast. Dainty, 
but not nutritious. And 1 shared them with 
Fox.” 

‘ ‘ Fox ! Fox lives still, then ?” cried De Breze, 
startled. 

“ In a sort of a way he does. But one mouse 
since yesterday morning is not much ; and he 
can’t expect that every day.” 

“ Why don’t you take him out ?” asked Sava- 
rin. “ Give him a chance of picking up a bone 
somewhere. ” 

“ I dare not. He would be picked up himself. 
Dogs are getting very valuable : they sell for fifty 
francs apiece. — Come, De Breze, where are we 
to dine ?” 

“ I and Savarin can dine at the London Tav- 
ern upon rat pate or jugged cat. But it would 
be impertinence to invite a satrap like yourself, 
who has a tvhole dog in his larder — a dish of fif- 
ty francs — a dish for a king. Adieu, my dear 
Frederic. Allans, Savarin.” 

“ I feasted you on better meats than dog when 
I could afford it,” said Frederic, plaintively ; 
“and the first time you invite me you retract 
the invitation. Be it so. Bon ajypetit." 

Bah !" said De Breze, catching Frederic’s 
arm as he turned to depart. “ Of course I was 
but jesting. Only another day, when my pock- 
ets will be emptv, do think what an excellent 
thing a roasted dog is, and make up your mind 
while Fox has still some little flesh on his bones.” 


“Flesh!” said Savarin, detaining them. 
“Look! See how right Voltaire was in say- 
ing, ‘ Amusement is the first necessity of civil- 
ized man.’ Pans can do without bread: Paris 
still retains Polichinello.” 

He pointed to the puppet-show, round which 
a crowd, not of children alone, but of men — 
middle-aged and old — were collected, while sous 
were dropped into the tin handed round by a 
squalid boy. 

“And, man arni,” whispered De Breze to Le- 
mercier, with the voice of a tempting fiend, “ ob- 
serve how Punch is without his dog.” 

It was true. The dog was gone — its place 
supplied by a melancholy emaciated cat. 

Frederic crawled toward the squalid boy. 
“What has become of Punch’s dog?” 

“ We ate him last Sunday. Next Sunday we 
shall have the cat in a pie,” said the urchin, with 
a sensual smack of the lips. 

“Oh, Fox! Fox!” murmured Frederic, as 
the three men went slowl}" down through the 
darkening gti'eets — the roar of the Prussian guns 
heard afar, while distinct and near rang the laugh 
of the idlers round the Punch without a dog. 


CHAPTER III. 

While De Breze and his friends w'ere feast- 
ing at the Cafe Anglais, and faring better than 
the host had promised — for the bill of fare com- 
prised such luxuries as ass, mule, pease, fried 
potatoes, and Champagne (Champagne in some 
mysterious way was inexhaustible during the 
time of famine) — a very different group had as- 
sembled in the rooms of Isaura Cicogna. She 
and the Venosta had hitherto escaped the ex- 
treme destitution to which many richer persons 
had been I'educed. It is true that Isaura’s for- 
tune, placed in the hands of the absent Louvier, 
and invested in the new street that was to have 
been, brought no return. It was true that in 
that street the Venosta, dreaming of cent, per 
cent., had invested all her savings. But the 
Venosta, at the first announcement of war, had 
insisted on retaining in hand a small sum from 
the amount Isaura had received from her “ ro- 
man," that might suffice for current expenses, 
and with yet more acute foresight had laid in 
stores of provisions and fuel immediately after 
the probability of a siege became apparent. But 
even the provident mind of the Venosta had nev- 
er foreseen that the siege would endure so long, 
or that the prices of all articles of necessity would 
rise so high. And meanwhile all resources — 
money, fuel, provisions — had been largely drawn 
upon by the charity and benevolence of Isaura, 
without much remonstrance on the part of the 
Venosta, whose nature was very accessible to 
pity. Unfortunately, too, of late money and pro- 
visions had failed to Monsieur and Madame Ra- 
meau, their income consisting partly of rents, 
no longer paid, and the profits of a sleeping part- 
nership in the old shop, from which custom had 
departed; so that they came to share the fire- 
side and meals at the rooms of their son’s fian- 
cee with little scruple, because utterly unaware 
that the money retained and the provisions stored 
by the Venosta were now nearly exhausted. 

The patriotic ardor Avhich had first induced 


THE PARISIANS. 


219 


the elder Rameau to volunteer his services as a 
National Guard had been ere this cooled if not 
suppressed, first by the hardships of the duty, 
and then by the disorderly conduct of his asso- 
ciates, and their ribald talk and obscene songs. 
He was much beyond the age at which he could 
be registered. His son was, howevei*, compelled 
to become his substitute, though from his sickly 
health and delicate frame attached to that por- 
tion of the National Guard which took no part 
in actual engagements, and was supposed to do 
work on the ramparts and maintain order in the 
city. 

In that duty, so opposed to his tastes and hab- 
its, Gustave signalized himself as one of the loud- 
est declaimers against the imbecility of the gov- 
ernment, and in the demand for immediate and 
energetic action, no matter at what loss of life, 
on the part of all — except the heroic force to 
which he himself was attached. Still, despite 
his military labors, Gustave found leisure to con- 
tribute to Red journals, and his contributions 
paid him tolerably well. To do him justice, his 
parents concealed from him the extent of their 
destitution, they, on their part, not aware that 
he was so able to assist them, rather fearing that 
he himself had nothing else for support but his 
scanty pay as a National Guard. In fact, of 
late the parents and son had seen little of each 
other. M. Rameau, though a Liberal politician, 
was Liberal as a tradesman, not as a Red Re- 
publican or a Socialist. And, though little heed- 
ing his son’s theories while the empire secured 
him from the practical effect of them, he was 
now as sincerely frightened at the chance of the 
Communists becoming rampant as most of the 
Parisian tradesmen were. Madame Rameau, on 
her side, though she had the dislike to aristo- 
crats which was prevalent with her class, was a 
stanch Roman Catholic, and, seeing in the dis- 
asters that had befallen her country the punish- 
ment justly incurred by its sins, could not but be 
shocked by the opinions of Gustave, though she 
little knew that he was the author of certain ar- 
ticles in certain journals in which these opinions 
were proclaimed with a vehemence far exceeding 
that which they assumed in his conversation. 
She had spoken to him with warm anger, mixed 
with passionate tears, on his irreligious princi- 
ples ; and from that moment Gustave shunned 
to give her another opportunity of insulting his 
pride and depreciating his wisdom. 

Partly to avoid meeting his parents, partly 
because he recoiled almost as much from the 
ennui of meeting the other visitors at her apart- 
ments — the Paris ladies associated with her in 
the ambulance, Raoul de Vandemar, whom he 
especially hated, and the Abbe Vertpre, who had 
recently come into intimate friendship with both 
the Italian ladies — his visits to Isaura had be- 
come exceedingly rare. He made his incessant 
military duties the pretext for absenting himself ; 
and now, on this evening, there were gathered 
round Isaura’s hearth — on which burned almost 
the last of the hoarded fuel — the Venosta, the 
two Rameaus, the Abbe Vertpre, who was at- 
tached as confessor to the society of which Isaura 
was so zealous a member. The old priest and 
the young poetess had become dear friends.. 
There is in the nature of a woman (and especial- 
ly of a woman at once so gifted and so child-like 
as Isaura, combining an innate tendency toward 

Q 


faith with a restless inquisitiveness of intellect, 
which is always suggesting query or doubt) a 
craving for something afar from the sphere of her 
sorrow, which can only be obtained through that 
“bridal of the earth and sky” which we call re- 
ligion. And hence, to natures like Isaura’s, that 
link between the woman and the priest, which 
the philosophy of France has never been able t(» 
dissever, 

“ It is growing late,” said Madame Rameau ; 
“I am beginning to feel uneasy. Our dear 
Isaura is not yet returned.” 

“You need be under no apprehension,” said 
the Abbe'. “ The ladies attached to the ambu- 
lance of which she is so tender and zealous a sis- 
ter incur no risk. There are always brave men 
related to the sick and wounded who see to the- 
safe return of the women. My poor Raoul vis- 
its that ambulance daily. His kinsman, M. de 
Rochebriant, is there among the wounded.” 

“ Not seriously hurt, I hope?” said the Venos- 
ta; “not disfigured? He was so handsome. 
It is only the ugly warrior whom a scar oh the 
face improves.” 

“Don’t be alarmed, signora; the Prussian 
guns spared his face. His wounds in themselves 
were not dangerous, but he lost a good deal of 
blood. Raoul and the Christian Brothers found 
him insensible among a heap of the slain.” 

“ M. de Vandemar seems to have very soon 
recovered the shock of his poor brother’s death, ” 
said Madame Rameau. “There is very little 
heart in an aristocrat.” 

The Abbe’s mild brow contracted. “Have 
more charity, my daughter. It is because Ra- 
oul’s sorrow for his lost brother is so deep and so 
holy that he devotes himself more than ever to 
the service of the Father which is in heaven. 
He said, a day or two after the burial, when 
plans for a monument to Enguerrand were sub- 
mitted to him, ‘ May my prayer be vouchsafed, 
and my life be a memorial of him more accept- 
able to his gentle spirit than monuments of bronze 
or marble. May 1 be divinely guided and sus- 
tained in my desire to do such good acts as he 
would have done had he been spared longer to 
earth. And whenever tempted to weary, may my 
conscience whisper. Betray not the trust left to 
thee by thy brother, lest thou be not reunited to 
him at last.’ ” 

“ Pardon me, pardon !” murmured Madame 
Rameau, humbly, while the Venosta burst into 
tears. 

The Abbe, though a most sincere and earnest 
ecclesiastic, was a cheery and genial man of the 
world ; and in order to relieve Madame Rameau 
from the painful self-reproach he had before ex- 
cited, he turned the conversation. “I must be- 
ware, however, ” he said, with his pleasant laugh, 
“as to the company in which I interfere in fam- 
ily questions, and especially in w'hich I defend 
my poor Raoul from any charge brought against 
him. For some good friend this day sent me a 
terrible organ of Communistic philosophy, in 
which we humble priests are very roughly han- 
dled, and I myself am specially singled out by 
name as a pestilent intermeddler in the affairs 
of private households. I am said to set the 
women against the brave men who are friends 
of the people, and am cautioned by very trucu- 
lent threats to cease from such villainous prac- 
tices.” And here, wdth a dry humor that turned 


220 


THE PARISIANS. 


into ridicule what would otherwise have excited 
disgust and indignation among his listeners, he 
read aloud passages replete with the sort of false 
eloquence which was then the vogue among the 
Red journals. In these passages not only the 
Abbe was pointed out for popular execration, 
but Raoul de Vandemar, though not expressly 
named, was clearly indicated as a pupil of the 
Abbe s, the type of a lay Jesuit. 

The Venosta alone did not share in the con- 
temptuous laughter with which the inflated style 
of these diatribes inspired the Rameaus, Her 
simple Italian mind was horror-stricken by lan- 
guage which the Abbe treated with ridicule. 

“Ah!” said M. Rameau, “I guess the au- 
thor — that fire-brand Felix Pyat.” 

“ No,” answered the Abbe ; “ the writer signs 
himself by the name of a more learned atheist — 
Diderot le jeune. ” 

Here the door opened, and Raoul entered, ac- 
companying Isaura. A change had come over 
the face of the young Vandemar since his broth- 
er's death. The lines about the mouth had 
deepejied ; the cheeks had lost their rounded 
contour and grown somewhat hollow ; but the 
expression was as serene as ever, perhaps even 
less pensively melancholy. His whole aspect was 
that of a man who has sorrowed, but been sup- 
ported in sorrow ; perhaps it was more sweet — 
certainly it was more lofty. 

And, as if there were in the atmosphere of his 
presence sometliing that communicated the like- 
ness of his own soul to others, since Isaura had 
been brought into his companionship, her own 
lovely face had caught the expression that pre- 
vailed in his — that, too, had become more sweet 
— that, too, had become more lofty. 

The friendship that had grown up between 
these two young mourners was of a very rare na- 
ture. It had in it no sentiment that could ever 
warm into the passion of human love. Indeed, 
had Isaura’s heart been free to give away, love 
for Raoul de Vandemar would have seemed to 
her a profanation. He was never more priestly 
than when he was most tender. And the ten- 
derness of Raoul toward her was that of some 
saint-like nature toward the acolyte whom it at- 
tracted upward. He had once, just before En- 
guerrand’s death, spoken to Isaura with a touch- 
ing candor as to his own predilection for a 
monastic life. “The worldly avocations that 
o])en useful and honorable careers for others 
have no charm for me. I care not for riches, 
nor power, nor honors, nor fame. The austerities 
of the conventual life have no terror for me ; on 
the contrary, they have a charm, for with them 
are abstraction from earth and meditation on 
heaven. In earlier years I might, like other 
men, have cherished dreams of human love, and 
felicity in married life, but for the sort of vener- 
ation with which I regarded one to whom I owe 
— humanly speaking — whatever of good there 
may be in me. Just when first taking my place 
among the society of young men who banish 
from their life all thought of another, I came 
under the influence of a woman who taught me 
to see that holiness was beauty. She gradually 
associated me with her acts of benevolence, and 
from her I learned to love God too well not to 
be indulgent to his creatures. I know not wheth- 
er the attachment 1 felt to her could have been 
inspired in one who had not from childhood 


conceived a romance, not perhaps justified by 
history, for the ideal images of chivalry. My 
feeling for her at first was that of the pure and 
poetic homage which a young knight was permit' 
ted, sans reproche, to render to some fair queen 
or chatelaine^ whose colors he wore in the lists, 
whose spotless repute he would have periled his 
life to defend. But soon even that sentiment, 
pure as it was, became chastened from all breath 
of earthly love in proportion as the admiration re- 
fined itself into reverence. She has often urged 
me to marry, but I have no bride on this earth. 
I do but want to see Enguerrand happily mar- 
ried, and then I quit the world for the cloister. ” 

But after Enguerrand’s death Raoul resigned 
all idea of the convent. That evening, as he at- 
tended to their homes Isaura and the other ladies 
attached to the ambulance, he said, in answer to 
inquiries about his mother, “She is resigned and 
calm ; I have promised her I will not, while she 
lives, bury her other son : I renounce my dreams 
of the monastery.” 

Raoul did not remain many minutes at Isau- 
ra’s. The Abbe accompanied him on his way 
home. “I have a request to make to you,” 
said the former; “you know, of course, your 
distant cousin the Vicomte de Mauleon ?” 

“Yes. Not so well as I ought, for Enguer- 
rand liked him.” 

“Well enough, at all events, to call on him 
with a request which I am commissioned to 
make, but it might come better from you as a 
kinsman. I am a stranger to him, and I know 
not whether a man of that sort would not regard 
as an officious intermeddling any communication 
made to him by a priest. The matter, however, 

is a very simple one. At the convent of 

there is a poor nun who is, I fear, dying. She 
has an intense desire to see M. de Mauleon, -whom 
she declares to be.her uncle, and her only surviv- 
ing relative. The laws of the convent are not too 
austere to prevent the interview she seeks in such 
a case. I should add that I am not acquainted 
with her previous history. I am not the con- 
fessor of the sisterhood ; he, poor man, was bad- 
ly wounded by a chance ball a few days ago 
when attached to an ambulance on the ramparts. 
As soon as the surgeon w'ould allow him to see 
any one he sent for me, and bade me go to the 
nun I speak of — Sister Ursula. It seems that 
he had informed her that M. de Mauleon was at 
Paris, and had promised to ascertain his address. 
His wound had prevented his doing so, but he 
trusted to me to procure the information. I am 
well acquainted with the Superieure of the con- 
vent, and I flatter myself that she holds me in 
esteem. I had therefore no difficulty to obtain 
her permission to see this poor nun, which I did 
this evening. She implored me for the peace of 
her soul to lose no time in finding out M. de 
Mauleon’s address, and entreating him to visit 
her. Lest he should demur, I was to give him 
the name by which he. had knowm her in the 
world — Louise Duval. Of course I obeyed. 
The address of a man who has so distinguished 
himself in this unhappy siege I very easily ob- 
tained, and repaired at once to M. de Mauleon’s 
apartment. I there learned that he was from 
home, and it was uncertain whether he would 
not spend the night on the ramparts.” 

“I will not fail to see him early in the morning.” 
said Raoul, “and execute your commission.” . 


THE PARISIANS. 


221 


CHAPTER IV. 

De Mauleon w;is somewhat surprised by 
Raoul’s visit the next morning. He had no 
great liking for a kinsman whose politely distant 
reserve toward him, in contrast to poor Enguer- 
ratid’s genial heartiness, had much wounded his 
sensitive self-respect ; nor could he comprehend 
tlie religious scruples which forbade Raoul to 
take a soldier’s share in the battle-field, though 
in seeking there to save the lives of others so 
fearlessly hazarding his own life. 

“ Pardon,” said Raoul, with his sweet mourn- 
ful smile, “the unseasonable hour at which I 
disturb you. But your duties on the ramparts 
and mine in the hospital begin earh", and I have 
promised the Abbe Vertpre to communicate a 
message of a nature which perhaps you may 
deem pressing. ” He proceeded at once to repeat 
what the Abbe had communicated to him the 
night before relative to the illness and the re- 
quest of the nun. 

“Louise Duval!” exclaimed the Vicomte — 
“discovered at last, and a religieuse! Ah! I 
now understand why she never sought me out 
when I re-appeared at Paris. Tidings of that 
sort do not penetrate the walls of a convent. I 
am greatly obliged to you, M. de Vandemar, for 
the trouble you have so kindly taken. This 
poor nun is related to me, and I will at once 
obey the summons. But this convent des — I 
am ashamed to say I know not where it is. A 
long way off, I suppose ?” 

“Allow me to be your guide,” said Raoul; 
“ I should take it as a favor to be allowed to see 
a little more of a man whom my lost brother 
held in such esteem.” 

Victor was touched by this conciliatory speech ; 
and in a few minutes more the two men- were on 
their way to the convent on the other side of the 
Seine. 

Victor commenced the conversation by a warm 
and heart-felt tribute to Enguerrand’s character 
and memory. “ I never,” he said, “ knew a na- 
ture more rich in the most endearing qualities 
of youth ; so gentle, so high-spirited, rendering 
every virtue more attractive, and redeeming such 
few faults or foibles as youth so situated and so 
tempted can not wholly escape, with an urbanity 
not conventional, not artificial, but reflected from 
the frankness of a genial temper and the tender- 
ness of a generous heart. Be comforted for his 
loss, my kinsman. A brave death was the prop- 
er crown of that beautiful life.” 

Raoul made no answer, but pressed gratefully 
the arm now linked within his own. The com- 
panions walked on in silence, Victor’s mind set- 
tling on the visit he was about to make to the 
niece so long mysteriously lost, and now so un- 
expectedly found. Louise had inspired him with 
a certain interest from her beauty and force of 
character, but never with any warm affection. 
He felt relieved to find that her life had found 
its clo.se in the sanctuary of the convent. He 
had never divested himself of a certain fear, in- 
spired by Louvier’s statement, that she might live 
to bring scandal and disgrace on the name he had 
with so much difficulty, and after so lengthened 
an anguish, partially cleared in his own person. 

Raoul left De Mauleon at the gate of the con- 
vent, and took his way toward the hospitals 
where he visited, and the poor whom he relieved. 


Victor was conducted silently into the con- 
vent parloir, and after waiting there several 
minutes the door opened, and the Superieure 
entered. As she advanced tow'ard him, with 
stately step and solemn visage, De Mauleon re- 
coiled, and uttered a half- suppressed exclama- 
tion that partook both of amaze and awe. Could 
it be possible? Was this majestic woman, with 
the grave, impassible aspect, once the ardent girl 
whose tender letters he had cherished through 
stormy years, and only burned on the night before 
the most perilous of his battle-fields ? This the 
one, the sole one, whom in his younger dreams 
he had seen as his destined wife? It was so — 
it was. Doubt vanished when he heard her 
voice ; and yet how different every tone, every 
accent, from those of the low, soft, thrilling mu- 
sic that had breathed in the voice of old! 

‘ ‘ M. de Mauleon, ” said the Superieure, calmly, 
“I grieve to sadden you by very mournful intel- 
ligence. Yesterday evening, when the Abbe un- 
dertook to convey to you the request of our Sis- 
ter Ursula, although she was beyond mortal hope 
of recovery — as otherwise you will conceive that 
I could not have relaxed the rules of this house 
so as to sanction your visit — there was no ap- 
prehension of immediate danger. It was be- 
lieved that her sufferings would be prolonged for 
some days. I saw her late last night before re- 
tiring to my cell, and she seemed even stronger 
than she had been for the last week. A sister 
remained at Avatch in her cell. Toward morn- 
ing she fell into apparently quiet sleep, and in 
that sleep she passed away.” The Superieure 
here crossed herself, and murmured pious words 
in Latin. 

“Dead! my poor niece!” said Victor, feel- 
ingly, roused from his stun at the first siglit of 
the Superieure by her measured tones, and the 
melancholy information she so composedly con- 
veyed to him. “ I can not, then, even learn why 
she so wished to see me once more — or what she 
might have requested at my hands !” 

“Pardon, M. le Vicomte. Such sorroAvful 
consolation I have resolved to afford you, not 
without scruples of conscience, but not without 
sanction of the excellent Abbe Vertpre, whom 1 
summoned early this morning to decide my du- 
ties in the sacred office I hold. As soon as Sis- 
ter Ursula heard of your return to Paris she ob- 
tained my permission to address to you a letter, 
subjected, when finished, to my perusal and sanc- 
tion. She felt that she had much on her mind 
which her feeble state might forbid her to make 
known to you in conversation with sufficient full- 
ness ; and as she could only have seen you in 
presence of one of the sisters, she imagined that 
there would also be less restraint in a written 
communication. In fine, her request was that, 
when you called, I might first place this letter 
in your hands, and allow you time to read it, 
before being admitted to her presence, when a 
few words, conveying your promise to attend 
to the wishes with which you would then be ac- 
quainted, would suffice for an interview in her 
exhausted condition. Do I make myself under- 
stood?” 

“Certainly, madame — and the letter?” 

“ She had concluded last evening ; and when 
I took leave of her later in the night, she placed 
it in my hands fOr approval. M. le Vicomte, it 
pains me to say that there is much in the tone 


222 


THE PARISIANS. 


of that letter which I grieve for and condemn. 
And it was my intention to point this out to our 
sister at morning, and tell her that passages must 
be alteied before I could give to you the letter. 
Her sudden decease deprived me of this oppor- 
tunity. I could not, of course, alter or erase a 
line — a word. My only option was to suppress 
the letter altogether, or give it you intact. The 
Abbe thinks that, on the whole, my duty does 
not forbid the dictate of my own impulse — my 
own feelings ; and I now place this letter in your 
hands.” 

I)e Mauleon took a packet, unsealed, from 
the thin white fingers of the Superieure, and, 
as he bent to receive it, lifted toward her eyes 
eloquent with a sorrowful, humble pathos, in 
which it was impossible for the heart of a wom- 
an who had loved not to see a reference to the 
past which the lips did not dare to utter. 

A faint, scarce perceptible blush stole over the 
marble cheek of the nun ; but, with an exqui- 
site delicacy, in which survived the woman while 
reigned the nun, she replied to the appeal : 

“M. Victor de Mauleon, before, having thus 
met, we part forever, permit a poor religieuseiXo 
say with what joy — a joy rendered happier be- 
cause it was tearful — I have learned through the 
Abbe Vertpre that the honor which, as between 
man and man, no one who had once known you 
could ever doubt, you have lived to vindicate 
from calumny.” 

“Ah ! you have heard that — at last, at last !” 

“ I repeat — of the honor thus deferred I never 
doubted.” The Superieure hurried on : “Great- 
er joy it has been to me to hear from the same 
venerable source that, while found bravest among 
the defenders of your country, you are clear from 
all alliance with the assailants of your God. Con- 
tinue so, continue so, Victor de Mauleon.” 

She retreated to the door, and then turned to- 
ward him with a look in which all the marble 
had melted away, adding, with words more form- 
ally nun-like, yet unmistakably woman-like, than 
those which had gone before, “ That to the last 
you may be true to God is a prayer never by me 
omitted.” . 

She spoke, and vanished. 

In a kind of dim and dream-like bewilderment 
Victor de Mauleon found himself without the 
walls of the convent. Mechanically, as a man 
does when the routine of his life is presented to 
him, from the first Minister of State to the poor 
clown at a suburban theatre, doomed to appear 
at their posts, to prose on a Beer Bill or gi-in 
through a horse-collar, though their hearts are 
bleeding at every pore with some household or 
secret affliction — mechanically De Mauleon went 
his way toward the ramparts at a section of 
which he daily drilled his raw recruits. Pro- 
verbial for his severity toward those who offend- 
ed, for the cordiality of his praise of those who 
pleased his soldierly judgment, no change of his 
demeanor was visible that morning, save that 
he might be somewhat milder to the one, some- 
what less hearty to the other. This routine duty 
done, he passed slowly toward a more deserted, 
because a more exposed, part of the defenses, 
and seated himself on the frozen sward alone. 
The cannon thundered around him. He heard 
unconsciously : from time to time an ohus hissed 
and splintered close at his feet : he saw with ab- 
stracted eye. His soul was with the past ; and. 


brooding over all that in the past lay buried, 
there came over bim a conviction of the vanity 
of the human earth-bounded objects for which 
we burn or freeze far more absolute than had 
grown out of the worldly cynicism connected 
with his worldly ambition. The sight of that 
face, associated with the one pure romance of 
his reckless youth, the face of one so estranged, 
so serenely aloft from all memories of youth, of 
romance, of passion, smote him in the midst of 
the new hopes of the new career, as the look on 
the skull of the woman he had so loved and so 
mourned, when disburied from her grave, smote 
the brilliant noble who became the stern reform-^' 
er of La Trappe. And while thus gloomily med- 
itating, the letter of the poor Louise Duval was 
forgotten. She whose existence had so troubled 
and crossed and partly marred the lives of oth- 
ers — she, scarcely dead, and already forgotten 
by her nearest of kin. Well — had she not for- 
gotten, put wholly out of her mind, all that w’as 
due to those much nearer to her than is an un- 
cle to a niece? 

The short, bitter, sunless day was advancing 
toward its decline before Victor roused himself 
w'ith a quick, impatient start from his reverie, 
and took forth the letter from the dead nun. 

It began with expressions of gratitude, of joy 
at the thought that she should see him again be- 
fore she died, thank him for his past kindness, 
and receive, she trusted, his assurance that he 
would attend to her last remorseful injunctions. 

I pass over much that followed in the explanation 
of events in her life sufficiently known to the read- 
er. She stated as the strongest reason why she 
had refused the hand of Louvier her knowledge 
that she should in due time become a mother — 
a fact concealed from Victor, secure that he would 
then urge her not to annul her informal marriage, 
but rather insist on the ceremonies that would 
render it valid. She touched briefly on her con- 
fidential intimacy with Madame Marigny, the 
exchange of name and papers, her confinement 
in the neighborhood of Aix, the child left to the 
care of the niu'se, the journey to Munich to find 
the false Louise Duval was no more. The doc- 
uments obtained through the agent of her easy- 
tempered kinsman, the late Marquis de Roche- 
briant, and her subsequent domestication in the 
house of the Von Rudesheims — all this it is need- 
less to do more here than briefly recapitulate. 
The letter then went on : 

“ While thus kindly treated by the family with 
whom nominally a governess, I was on the terms 
of a friend with Signor Ludovico Cicogna, an Ital- 
ian of noble birth. He was the only man I ever 
cared for. I loved him with frail human passion. 
I could not tell him my true history. I could not 
tell him that I had a child : such intelligence 
would have made him renounce me at once. He 
had a daughter, still but an infant, by a former 
marriage, then brought up in France. He wish- 
ed to take her to his house, and his second wife to 
supply the place of her mother. What was I to 
do with theVhild I had left near Aix ? While 
doubtful and distracted, I read an advertisement 
in the journals to the effect that a French lady, 
then staying in Coblentz, wished to adopt a fe- 
male child not exceeding the age of six — the 
child to be wholly resigned to her by the parents, 
she undertaking to rear and provide for it as her 
own. I resolved to go to Coblentz at once. I 


223 


THE PARISIANS. 


did so. I saw this lady. She seemed in afflu- 
ent circumstances, yet young, but a confirmed 
invalid, confined the greater part of the day to 
her sofa by some malady of the spine. She told 
me very frankly her story. She had been a pro- 
fessional dancer on the stage, had married re- 
spectably, quitted the stage, become a widow, 
and shortly afterward been seized with the com- 
])laint that would probably for life keep her a se- 
cluded prisoner in her room. Thus afflicted, and 
without tie, interest, or object in the world, she 
conceived the idea of adopting a child that she 
might bring up to tend and cherish her as a daugh- 
ter. In this the imperative condition was that 
the child should never be resought by the parents. 
She was pleased by my manner and appearance : 
she did not wish her adopted daughter to be the 
child of peasants. She asked me for no refer- 
ences — made no inquiries. She said cordially 
that she wished for no knowledge that, through 
any indiscretion of her own, communicated to 
the child, might lead her to seek the discovery 
of her real parents. In fine, I left Coblentz on 
the understanding that I was to bring the infant, 
and if it pleased Madame Surville, the agreement 
was concluded. 

“1 then repaired to Aix. I saw the child. 
Alas ! unnatural mother that I was, the sight 
only more vividly brought before me the sense 
of my own perilous position, ^et the child was 
lovely ! a likeness of myself, but lovelier far, for 
it was a pure, innocent, gentle loveliness. And 
they told her to call me '‘Maman.' Oh, did I 
not relent when I heard that name ? No ; it 
jarred on my ear as a word of reproach and 
shame. In walking with the infant toward the 
railway station, imagine my dismay when sud- 
denly I met the man who had been taught to be- 
lieve me dead. I soon discovered that his dis- 
may was equal to my own — that I had nothing 
to fear from his desire to claim me. It did oc- 
cur to me for a moment to resign his child to 
him. But when he shrank reluctantly from 
a half suggestion to that effect, my pride was 
wounded, my conscience absolved. And, after 
all, it might be unsafe to my future to leave with 
him any motive for retracing me. I left him 
hastily. I have never seen nor heard of him 
more. I took the child to Coblentz. Madame 
Surville was charmed with its prettiness and prat- 
tle — charmed still more when I rebuked the poor 
infant for calling me ‘ilfaimn,’ and said, ‘Thy 
real mother is here.’ Freed from my trouble, I 
returned to the kind German roof I had quitted, 
and shortly after became the wife of Ludovico 
Cicogna. 

‘ ‘ My punishment soon began. His was a light, 
fickle, pleasure-hunting nature. He soon grew 
weary of me. My very love made me unamiable 
to him. I became irritable, jealous, exacting. 
His daughter, who now came to live with us, was 
another subject of discord. I knew that he loved 
her better than me. I became a harsh step-moth- 
er; and Ludovico’s reproaches, vehemently made, 
nursed all my angriest passions. But a son of | 
this new marriage was born to myself. My pret^ 
tv Luigi ! how my heart became wrapped up in 
him ! Nursing him, I forgot resentment against 
his father. Well, poor Cicogna fell ill and died. 

I mourned him sincerely ; but my boy was left. 
Poverty then fell on me— poverty extreme. Ci- 
cogna’s sole income was derived fi*om a post ifi 


the Austrian dominion in Italy, and ceased with 
it. He received a small pension in compensation ; 
that died with him. 

“ At this time an Englishman, with whom Lu- 
dovico had made acquaintance in Venice, and 
who visited often at our house in Verona, offer- 
ed me his hand. He had taken an extraordinary 
liking to Isaura, Cicogna’s daughter by his first 
marriage. But I think his proposal was dictated 
partly by compassion for me, and more by affec- 
tion for her. For the sake of my boy Luigi I 
married him. He was a good man, of retired 
learned habits witn which I had no sympathy. 
His companionship overwhelmed me with ennui. 
But I bore it patiently for Luigi’s sake. God 
saw that my heart was as much as ever estranged 
from Him, and he took away my all on earth — 
my boy. Then in my desolation I turned to our 
Hol}^ Church for comfort. I found a friend in 
the priest, my confessor. I was startled to leai n 
from him how guilty I had been — was still. 
Pushing to an extreme the doctrines of the 
Church, he would not allow that my first mar- 
riage, though null by law, was void in the eyes of 
Heaven. Was not the death of the child I so 
cherished a penalty due to pay sin toward the 
child I had abandoned ? 

“These thoughts pressed on me night and 
day. With the consent and approval of the 
good priest, I determined to quit the roof of M. 
iSelby, and to devote myself to the discovery of 
my forsaken Julie. 

“ I had a painful interview with M. Selby. I 
announced my ‘intention to separate from him. 
I alleged as a reason my conscientious repug- 
nance to live with a professed heretic — an enemy 
to our Holy Church. When M. Selby found 
that he could not shake ray resolution, he lent 
himself to it with the forbearance and generosity 
which he had always exhibited. On our mar- 
riage he had settled on me five thousand pounds, 
to be absolutely mine in the event of his death. 
He now proposed to concede to me the interest 
on that capital during his life, and he undertook 
the charge of my step-daughter Isaura, and se- 
cured to her all the rest he had to leave — such 
landed property as he possessed in England pass- 
ing to a distant relative. 

“ So we parted, not with hostility — tears were 
shed on both sides. I set out for Coblentz. 
Madame Surville had long since quitted that 
town, devoting some years to the round of vari- 
ous mineral spas in vain hope of cure. Not 
without some difficulty I traced her to her last 
residence in the neighborhood of Paris, but she 
was then no more — her death accelerated by the 
shock occasioned by the loss of her whole for- 
tune, which she had been induced to place in 
one of the numerous fraudulent companies by 
which so many have been ruined. Julie, who 
was with her at the time of her death, had dis- 
appeared shortly after it — none could tell me 
whither ; but from such hints as I could gather, 
the poor child, thus left destitute, had been be- 
trayed into sinful courses. 

“Probably I might yet by searching inquiry 
have found her out ; you will say it was my duty 
at least to institute such inquiry. No doubt ; 
I now remorsefully feel that it was. I did not 
think so at the time. The Italian priest had 
given me a few letters of introduction to French 
ladies with whom, when they had sojourned at 


224 : 


THE PARISIANS. 


Florence, he had made acquaintance. These 
ladies were very strict devotees, formal observ- 
ers of those decorums by which devotion pro- 
claims itself to the world. They had received 
me not only with kindness, but with marked re- 
spect. They chose to exalt into the noblest self- 
sacrifice the act of my leaving M, Selby’s house. 
Exaggerating the simple cause assigned to it in 
the priest’s letter, they represented me as quit- 
ting a luxurious home and an idolizing husband 
rather than continue intimate intercourse with 
the enemy of my religion. This new sort of 
flattery intoxicated me with its fumes. I re- 
coiled from the tliought of shattering the pedes- 
tal to which I had found myself elevated. What 
if I should discover my daughter in one fi'om the 
touch of whose robe these holy women would 
recoil as from the rags of a leper ! No ; it 
would be impossible for me to own her — impos- 
sible for me to give her the shelter of my roof. 
Nay, if discovered to hold any commune with 
such an outcast, no explanation, no excuse short 
of the actual truth, would avail with these aus- 
tere judges of human error. And the actual 
truth would be yet deeper disgrace. I reasoned 
away my conscience. If I looked for example 
in the circles in which I had obtained reveren- 
tial place, I could find no instance in which a 
girl who had fallen from virtue was not repu- 
diated by her nearest relatives. Nay, when I 
thought of my own mother, had not her father 
refused to see her, to acknowledge her child, 
for no other offense than that of a vmalliance 
which wounded the family pride ? That pride, 
alas! was in my blood — my sole inheritance 
from the family I sprang from. 

“ Thus it went on, till I had grave symptoms 
of a disease which rendered the duration of my 
life uncertain. My conscience awoke and tor- 
tured me. I resolved to take the veil. Vanity 
and pride again ! My resolution was applauded 
by those whose opinion had so swayed my mind 
and my conduct. Before I retired into the con- 
vent from which I write I made legal provision 
as to the bulk of the fortune which, by the death 
of M. Selby, has become absolutely at my dis- 
posal. One thousand pounds amply sufficed for 
dotation to the convent : the other four thousand 
pounds are given in trust to the eminent notary, 

M. Nadaud, Rue . On applying to him, you 

will find that the sum, with the accumulated in- 
terest, is bequeathed to you — a tribute of grati- 
tude for the assistance you afforded me in the 
time of your own need, and the kindness with 
which you acknowledged our relationship and 
commiserated my misfortunes. 

“ But oh, my uncle, find out — a man can do 
so with a facility not accorded to a woman — what 
has become of this poor .Julie, and devote what 
you may deem light and just of the sum thus be- 
queathed to place her above want and temptation. 
In doing so, I know you will respect my name : 
I would not have it dishonor you, indeed. 

“I have been employed in writing this long 
letter since the day I heard you were in Paris. 
It has exhausted the feeble remnants of my 
strength. It will be given to you before the in- 
terview I at once dread and long for, and in that 
inteiwiew you will not rebuke me. Will you, 
my kind uncle ? No, you will only soothe and 
pity ! 

“ Would that I were worthy to pray for oth- 


ers, that I might add, ‘ May the Saints have you 
in their keeping, and lead you to faith in the 
Holy Church, which has power to absolve from 
sins those who repent as I do.’ ” 

The letter dropped from Victor’s hand. He 
took it up, smoothed it mechanically, and witli 
a dim, abstracted, bewildered, pitiful wonder. 
Well might the Superieure have hesitated to al- 
low confessions, betraying a mind .so little regu- 
lated by genuine religious faith, to pass into oth- 
er hands. Evidently it was the paramount duty 
of rescuing from want or from sin the writer’s 
forsaken child that had overborne all other con- 
siderations in the mind of the Woman and the 
Priest she consulted. 

Throughout that letter what a strange perver- 
sion of understanding ! what a half-unconscious 
confusion of wrong and right! the duty marked 
out so obvious and so neglected — even the relig- 
ious sentiment awakened by the conscience so 
dfviding itself from the moral instinct ! the dread 
of being thought less religious by obscure com- 
parative strangers stronger than the moral ob- 
ligation to discover and reclaim the child for 
whose errors, if she had erred, the mother who 
so selfishly forsook her was alone responsible ! 
even at the last, at the approach of death, the 
love for a name she had never made a self- 
sacrifice to preserve unstained, and that con- 
cluding exhortation — that reliance on a repent- 
ance in which there was so qualified a repara- 
tion ! 

More would Victor de Mauleon have wonder- 
ed had he knowm those points of similarity in 
character, and in the nature of their final be- 
quests, between Louise Duval and the husband 
she had deserted. By one of those singular co- 
incidences which, if this work be judged by the 
ordinary rules presented to the ordinary novel- 
reader, a critic would not unjustly impute to de- 
fective invention in the author, the provision for 
this child, deprived of its natural parents during 
their lives, is left to the discretion and honor of 
trustees, accompanied, on the part of the con.se- 
crated Louise and “the blameless King,” with 
the injunction of respect to their worldly reputa- 
tions — two parents so opposite in condition, in 
creed, in disposition, yet assimilating in that 
point of individual character in which it touches 
the wide vague circle of human opinion. For 
this, indeed, the excuses of Richard King are 
strong, inasmuch as the secrecy he sought was 
for the sake not of his own memory, but that 
of her whom the world knew only as his honor- 
ed wi/e. The conduct of Louise admits no such 
excuse ; she dies as she had lived — an Egoist. 
But, whatever the motives of the parents, what 
is the fate of the deserted child ? What revenge 
does the worldly opinion which the parents 
would escape for themselves inflict on the inno- 
cent infant to whom the bulk of their w'orldly 
possessions is to be clandestinely conveyed? 
Would all the gold of Ophir be compensation 
enough for her? 

Slowly De Mauleon roused himself, and tum- 
ped from the solitary place where he had been 
seated to a more crowded part of the ramparts. 
He passed a group of young Moblots^ with flow- 
ers wreathed round their gun-barrels. ‘ ‘ I f,” said 
one of them, gayly, “Paris wants bread, it never 
wants flowers.” His companions laughed mer- 
rily, and burst out into a scunile song in ridi- 


THE B0T7NP ONLY FOE A MOMENT DBOWNED TUB SONQ^ BUT THE 8t>L[NTEE8 8TBUOK A MAN IN A OOARSE, BAOUEl* DBEbM \Vui> 11A1> 

STOPrEI) TO I-18TEN TO TUE SINGERS. 




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‘...'It, '. ' 



THE PARISIANS. 


cule of St. Trochu. Just then an obus fell a few 
yards before the group. The sound only for a 
moment drowned the song, but the splinters 
struck a man in a coarse, ragged dress, who had 
stopped to listen to the singers. At his sharp 
cry, two men hastened to his side : one was Vic- 
tor de Mauleon ; the other was a surgeon, who 
quitted another group of idlers — National Guards 
— attracted by the shriek that summoned his pro- 
fessional aid. The poor man was terribly wound- 
ed. The surgeon, glancing at De Mauleon, 
shrugged his shoulders, and muttered, “Past 
help!” The sufferer turned his haggard eyes 
on the Vicomte, and gasped out, “ M. de Mau- 
leon?” 

“That is my name,” answered Victor, sur- 
prised, and not immediately recognizing the 
sufferer. 

“ Hist, Jean Lebeau ! look at me — you recol- 
lect me now — Marc le Roux, concierge to the 
secret council. Ay, I found out who you were 
long ago — followed you home from the last 
meeting you broke up. But I did not betray 
you, or you would have been murdered long 
since. Beware of the old set — beware of — of — ” 
Here his voice broke off into shrill exclamations 
of pain. Curbing his last agonies with a power- 
ful effort, he faltered forth, “You owe me a serv- 
ice — see to the little one at home — she is starv- 
ing.” The death-rd/e came on; in a few mo- 
ments he was no more. 

Victor gave orders for the removal of the 
corpse, and hurried away. The surgeon, who 
had changed countenance when he overheard 
the name in which the dying man had address- 
ed De Mauleon, gazed silently after De Mau- 
leon’s retreating form, and then, also quitting 
the dead, rejoined the group he had quitted. 
Some of those who composed it acquired evil re- 
nown later in the war of thq Communists, and 
came to disastrous ends : among that number 
the Pole, Dombinsky, nnd other members of the 
secret council. The Italian, Raselli, was there 
too, but, subtler than his French confreres, he 
divined the fate of the Communists, and glided 
from it — safe now in his native land, destined 
there, no doubt, to the funereal honors and last- 
ing renown -which Italy bestows on the dust of 
her sons who have advocated assassination out 
of love for the human race. 

Amidst this group, too, was a National Guard, 
strayed from his proper post, and stretched on 
the frozen ground, and, early though the hour, 
in the profound sleep of intoxication. 

“So,” said Dombinsky, “you have found your 
errand in vain. Citizen le Noy ; another victim 
to the imbecility of our generals. ” 

“And partly one of us,” replied the Medecin 
des Pauvres. “You remember poor Le Roux, 
who kept the old baraque where the Council of 
Ten used to meet? Yonder he lies.” 

“Don’t talk of the Council of Ten. What 
fools and dupes we werd made by that vieux 
qr€din, Jean Lebeau ! How I wish I could meet 
him again !” 

Gaspard le Noy smiled sarcastically. “So 
much the worse for you if you did. A muscu- 
lar and a ruthless fellow is that Jean Lebeau!” 
Therewith he turned to the drunken sleeper, and 
woke him up with a shake and a kick. 

“ Armand — Armand Monnier, I say, rise — rub 
your eyes ! What if you are called to your post ? 


220 

What if you are shamed as a deserter and a 
coward ?” 

Armand turned, rose with an effort from the 
recumbent to the sitting posture, and stared diz- 
zily in the face of the Medecin des Pauvres. 

“ I was dreaming that I had caught by the 
throat,” said Armand, wildly, “the aristo who 
shot my brother; and lo! there were two men, 
Victor de Mauleon and Jean Lebeau.” 

“ Ah ! there is something in dreams,” said the 
surgeon. “Once in a thousand times a dream 
comes true.” 


CHAPTER V. 

The time now came when all provision of food 
or of fuel failed the modest household of Isau- 
ra ; and there was not only herself and the Ve- 
nosta to feed and warm — there were the servants 
whom they had brought from Italy, and had not 
the heart now to dismiss to the certainty of fam- 
ine. True, one of the three, the man, had re- 
turned to his native land before the commence- 
ment of the siege ; but the two women had re- 
mained. They supported themselves now as 
they could on the meagre rations accorded by 
the government. Still Isaura attended the am- 
bulance to which she was attached. From the 
ladies associated with her she could readily have 
obtained ample supplies; but they had no con- 
ception of her real state of destitution ; and there 
was a false pride generally prevalent among the 
respectable classes, which Isaura shared, that 
concealed distress lest alms should be proffered. 

The destitution of the household had been 
carefully concealed from the parents of Gustave 
Rameau until, one day, Madame Rameau, en- 
tering at the hour at which she generally, and 
her husband sometimes, came for a place by the 
fireside and a seat at the board, found on the 
one only ashes, on the other a ration of the black 
nauseous compound which had become the sub- 
stitute for bread. 

Isaura was absent on her duties at the ambu- 
I lance hospital — purposely absent, for she shrank 
from the bitter task of making clear to the friends 
of her betrothed the impossibility of continuing 
the aid to their support which their son had neg- 
lected to contribute, and still more from the 
comment which she knew they would make on 
his conduct in absenting himself so wholly of 
late, and in the time of such tiial and pressure, 
both from them and from herself. Truly, she 
rejoiced at that absence so far as it affected her- 
self. Every hour of the day she silently asked 
her conscience whether she were not now ab- 
solved from a promise won from her only by an 
assurance that she had power to influence for 
good the life that now voluntarily separated it- 
self from her own. As she had never loved Gus- 
tave, so she felt no resentment at the indifference 
his conduct manifested. On the contrary, she 
hailed it as a sign that the annulment of their 
betrothal would be as welcome to him as to her- 
self. And if so, she could restore to him the 
sort of compassionate friendship she had learned 
to cherish in the hour of his illness and repent- 
ance. She had resolved to seize the first op- 
portunity he afforded to her of speaking to him 
with frank and truthful plainness. But, mean- 
I while, her gentle nature recoiled from the cou; 


226 


THE PARISIANS. 


fession of her resolve to appeal to Gustave him- 
self for the rupture of their engagement. 

Thus the Venosta alone received Madame Ra- 
meau ; and while that lady was still gazing round 
her vvith an emotion too deep for immediate ut- 
terance, her husband entered, with an expression 
of face new to him — the look of a man who has 
been stung to anger, and who has braced his 
mind to some stern determination. This alter- 
ed countenance of the good-tempered bourgeois 
was -not, however, noticed by the two women. 
The Venosta did not even raise her eyes to it 
as, Avith humbled accents, she said, “Pardon, 
dear monsieur, pardon, madame, our want of 
hospitality; it is not our hearts that fail. We 
kept our state from you as long as we could. 
Now it speaks for itself : ‘ La fame e una hratta 
festin. ’ ” 

“Oh, madame! and oh, my poor Isaura!” 
cried Madame Rameau, bursting into tears. 
“ So we have been all this time a burden on you 
— aided to bring such Avant oh you ! Hoav can 
Ave ever be forgiven? And my son — to leave 
us thus — not even fo tell us Avhere to find him!” 

“Do not degrade us, my wife,” said M. Ra- 
meau, Avith unexpected dignity, “by a word to 
imply that Ave would stoop to sue for support to 
our ungrateful child. No, Ave Avill not starve ! 
I am strong enough still to find food for you. I 
Avill apply for restoration to the National Guard. 
They have augmented the pay to married men ; 
it is noAv nearly two francs and a half a day to a 
j)ere de famille, and on that pay we all can at 
least live. Courage, my Avife ! I will go at once 
for employment. Many men older than I am 
are at Avork on the ramparts, and Avill march to 
the battle on the next sortie. ” 

“It shall not be so!” exclaimed Madame 
Rameau, vehemently, and Avinding her arm 
round her husband’s neck. “ I loved my son 
better than thee once — more the shame to me. 
Noav I Avould rather lose tAventy such sons than 
])eril thy life, my Jacques ! — Madame,” she con- 
tinued, turning to the Venosta, “thou Avert 
Aviser than I. Thou Avert ever opposed to the 
union betAveen thy young friend and my son. I 
felt sore Avith thee for it — a mother is so selfish 
Avhen she puts herself in the place of her child. 
I thought that only through marriage with one 
so pure, so noble, so holy, Gustave could be 
saA'ed from sin and evil. I am deceived. A man 
so heartless to his parents, so neglectful of his 
affianced, is not to be redeemed. I brought 
about this betrothal : tell Isaura that I release 
her from it. I haA^e Avatched her closely since 
she Avas entrapped into it. I know hoAv misera- 
ble the thought of it has made her, though, in 
her sublime devotion to her plighted word, she 
sought to conceal from me the real state of her 
heart. If the betrothal brings such sorrow, Avhat 
AA'ould the union do! Tell her this from me. 
Come, Jacques, come aAvay !” 

“ Stay, madame I” exclaimed the Venosta, her 
excitable nature much affected by this honest 
outburst of feeling. “It is true that I did op- 
pose, so far as I could, my poor Piccolo’s en- 
gagement Avith M. GustaA’e. But I dare not do 
your bidding. Isaura Avould not listen to me. 
And let us be just : M. Gustave may be able 
satisfactorily to explain his seeming indifference 
and neglect. His health is always very delicate ; 
perhaps he may be again dangerously ill. He 


serves in the National Guard ; perhaps — ” She 
paused, but the mother conjectured the word left 
unsaid, and, clasping' her hands, cried out, in an- 
guish, “Perhaps dead! — and Ave have Avronged 
him ! Oh, Jacques, Jacques ! how shall Ave 
find out — hoAV discover our boy ? Who can tell 
us Avhere to search — at the hospital, or in the 
cemeteries ?” At the last Avord she dropped into 
a seat, and her Avhole frame shook Avith her sobs. 

Jacques approached her tenderly, and kneel- 
ing by her side, said : 

“ No, 7n’amie, comfort thyself, if it be indeed 
a comfort to learn that thy son is alive and Avell. 
For my part, I knoAv not if I would not rather 
he had died in his innocent childhood. I haA^e 
seen him — spoken to him. I knoAv Avhere he is 
to be found.” 

“You do, and concealed it from me? Oh, 
Jacques!” 

“Listen to me, Avife, and you too, madame; 
for what I have to say should be made known to 
Mademoiselle Cicogna. Some time since, on 
the night of the famous sortie, when at my post 
on the ramparts, I was told that Gustave had 
joined himself to the most violent of the Red 
Republicans, and had uttered at the Club de la 
Vengeance sentiments of Avhich I will only say 
that I, his father, and a Frenchman, hung my 
head with shame Avhen they Avere repeated to me. 
I resolved to go to the club myself. I did. I 
heard him speak — heard him denounce Christian- 
ity as the instrument of tyrants.” 

“ Ah !” cried the tAVO Avomen, Avith a simulta- 
neous shudder. 

“When the assembly broke up I Avaylaid him 
at the door. I spoke to him seriously. 1 told him 
what anguish such announcement of blasphemous 
opinions avouW inflict on his pious mother. I told 
him I should deem it rny duty to inform Made- 
moiselle Cicogna, and Avarn her against the union 
on Avhich he had told us his heart Avas bent He 
appeared sincerely moved by what I said, im- 
plored me to keep silence toAvard his mother 
and his betrothed, and promised, on that con- 
dition, to relinquish at once Avhat he called ‘ his 
career as an orator,’ and appear no more at such 
execrable clubs. On this understanding I held 
my tongue. Why, Avith such other causes of 
grief and suffering, should I tell thee, poor wife, 
of a sin that I hoped thy son had repented and 
would not repeat ? And Gustave kept his word. 
He has never, so far as I know, attended, at least 
spoken, at the Red clubs since that evening.” 

“Thank Heaven so far, ” murmured Madame 
Rameau. 

‘ ‘ So far, yes ; but hear more. A little time 
after I thus met him he changed his lodging, 
and did not confide to us his new address, giA’ing 
as a reason to us that he Avished to av’oid all clew 
to his discovery by that pertinacious Mademoi- 
selle Julie.” 

Rameau had here sunk his voice into a Avhis- 
per, intended only for his wife, but the ear of the 
Venosta Avas fine enough to catch the sound, and 
she repeated, “ Mademoiselle Julie ! Santa Ma- 
ria ! Avho is she ?” 

“ Oh,” said M. Rameau, Avith a shrug of his 
shoulders, and with true Parisian sang-froid as 
to such matters of morality, “a trifle not Avorth 
considering. Of course a good-looking gar^on 
like Gustave must have his little affairs of the 
heart before he settles for life. Unluckily, 


THE PARISIANS. 


227 


among those of Gustave was one with a violent- 
tempered girl who persecuted him wlien he 
left her, and he naturally wished to avoid all 
chance of a silly scandal, if only out of respect to 
the dignity of his fiancee. But I found that 
was not the true motive, or at least the only one, 
for concealment. Prepare yourself, my poor 
wife. Thou hast heard of these terrible journals 
which the decheance has let loose upon us. Our 
unhappy boy is the principal writer of one of the 
worst of them, under the name of ‘Diderot le 
Jeune.’” 

“ What !” cried the Venosta. “That mon- 
ster ! The good Abbe Vertpre was telling us of 
the writings with that name attached to them. 
The Abbe himself is denounced by mime as one 
of those -meddling priests who are to be con- 
strained to serve as soldiers, or pointed out to the 
vengeance of the canaille. Isaura's fiancee a 
blasphemer!” 

“ Hush, hush !” said Madame Rameau, rising, 
very pale -but self-collected. “How do you 
know this, Jacques ?” 

“ From the lips of Gustave himself. I heard 
first of it yesterday from one of the young repro- 
bates with whom he used to be familiar, and who 
even complimented me on the rising fame of my 
son, and praised the eloquence of his article that 
day. But I would not believe him. I bought 
the journal — here it is ; saw the name and ad- 
dress of the printer — went this morning to the 
office — was there told that ‘Diderot le Jeune’ 
was within revising the press — stationed myself 
by the street-door, and when Gustave came out 
I seized his arm and asked him to say Yes or 
No if he was the author of this infamous article — 
this, which I now hold in my hand. He owned 
the authorship with pride ; talked wildly of the 
great man he was — of the great things he was to 
do ; said that, in hitherto concealing his true 
name, he had done all he could to defer tO'the 
bigoted prejudices of his parents and his fiancee; 
and that if genius, like fire, would find its way 
out, he could not help it ; that a time was rapid- 
ly coming when his opinions would be upper- 
most that since October the Communists were 
gaining ascendency, and only waited the end of 
the siege to put down the present government, 
and with it all hypocrisies and shams, religious 
or social. My wife, he was rude to me, insult- 
ing ; but he had been drinking — that made him 
incautious ; and he continued to walk by my side 
toward his own lodging, on reaching which he 
ironically invited me to enter, saying, ‘ I should 
meet there men who would soon argue me out 
of my obsolete notions.’ You may go to him, 
wife, now, if you please. I will not, nor will I 
take from him a crust of bread. I came hither 
determined to tell the young lady all this, if I 
found her at home. I should be a dishonored 
man if I suffered her to be cheated into misery. 
There, Madame Venosta, there! Take that 
journal, show it to mademoiselle, and report to 
her all I have said. ” 

M. Rameau, habitually the mildest of men, 
Iiad, in talking, worked himself up into positive 
fury. 

His wife, calmer but more deeply affected, 
made a piteous sign to the Venosta not to say 
more, and, without other salutation or adieu, 
took her husband’s arm, and led him from the 
house. 


CHAPTER VI. 

Obtaining from her husband Gustave’s ad- 
dress, Madame Rameau hastened to her son’s 
apartment alone through the darkling streets. 
The house in which he lodged was in a different 
quarter from that in which Isaura had visited him. 
Then the street selected was still in the centre 
of the beau monde — now it was within the pre- 
cincts of that section of the many-faced capital 
in which the bean monde was held in detestation 
or scorn ; still the house had certain pretensions, 
boasting a court-yard and a porter’s lodge. Ma- 
dame Rameau, instructed to mount au second, 
found the door ajar, and, entering, perceived on 
the table of the little salon the remains of a feast 
which, however untempting it might have been 
in happier times, contrasted strongly the meagre 
fare of which Gustave’s parentshad deemed them- 
selves fortunate to partake at the board of his 
betrothed — remnants of those viands which offer- 
ed to the inquisitive epicure an experiment in 
food much too costly for the popular stomach — 
dainty morsels of elephant, hippopotamus, and 
wolf, interspersed with half-emptied bottles of 
varied and high-priced wines. Passing these 
evidences of unseasonable extravagance with a 
mute sentiment of anger and disgust, Madame 
Rameau penetrated into a small cabinet, the door 
of which was also ajai\ and saw her son stretch- 
ed on his bed, half dressed, breathing heavily in 
the sleep which follows intoxication. She did 
not attempt to disturb him. She placed herself 
quietly by his side, gazing mournfully on the face 
which she had once so proudly contemplated, 
now haggard and faded — still strangely beautiful, 
though it was the beauty of ruin. 

From time to time he stirred uneasily, and 
muttered broken words, in which fragments of 
his own delicately worded verse were incoher- 
ently mixed up with ribald slang, addressed to 
imaginary companions. In his dreams he was 
evidently living over again his late revel, with 
episodical diversions into the poet -world, of 
which he was rather a vagrant nomad than a 
settled cultivator. Then she would silently 
bathe his feverish temples with the perfumed 
water she found on his dressing-table. And so 
she watched, till, in the middle of the night, he 
woke up, and recovered the possession of his 
reason with a quickness that surprised Madame 
Rameau. He was, indeed, one of those men in 
whom excess of drink, when slept off, is suc- 
ceeded by extreme mildness, the effect of nerv- 
ous exhaustion, and by a dejected repentance, 
which, to his mother, seemed a propitious lucid- 
ity of the moral sense. 

Certainly, on seeing her, he threw himself on 
her breast, and began to shed tears. Madame 
Rameau had not the heart to reproach him 
sternly. But by gentle degrees she made him 
comprehend the pain he had given to his father, 
and the destitution in which he had deserted his 
parents and his affianced. In his present mood 
Gustave was deeply affected by these representa- 
tions. He excused himself feebly by dwelling 
on the excitement of the times, the preoccupa- 
tion of his mind, the example of his companions; 
but with his excuses he mingled passionate ex- 
pressions of remorse, and before daybreak moth- 
er and son were completely reconciled. Then 
he fell into a tranquil sleep ; and Madame Ra- 


228 


THE PARISIANS. 


meau, quite worn out, slept also, in the chair be- 
side him, her arm around his neck. He awoke 
before she did, at a late hour in the morning, 
and, stealing from her arm, went to his escritoire^ 
and took forth what money he found there, half 
of which he poured into her lap, kissing her till 
she awoke. 

“Mother,” he said, “henceforth I will work 
for thee and my father. Take this trifle now ; 
the rest I reserve for Isaura.” 

“Joy! I have found my boy again. But 
Isaura — I fear that she will not take thy money, 
and all thought of her must also be abandoned, ” 

Gustave had already turned to his looking- 
glass, and Avas arranging with care his dark 
ringlets : his personal vanity — his remorse ap- 
peased by this pecuniary oblation — had revived. 

“No,” he said, gayly, “I don’t think I shall 
abandon her ; and it is not likely, when she sees 
and hears me, that she can wish to abandon me ! 
Now let us breakfast, and then I will go at once 
to her.” 

In the mean while Isaura, on her return to her 
apartment at the wintry night-fall, found a cart 
stationed at the door, and the Venosta on the 
threshold superintending the removal of various 
articles of furniture — indeed, all such articles as 
were not absolutely required. 

“Oh, PiccolaJ” she said, with an attempt at 
cheerfulness, “I did not expect thee back so 
soon. Hush! I have made a famous bargain. 
I have found a broker to buy these things, which 
we don’t want just at present, and can replace 
by new and prettier things Avhen the siege is OA’er 
and we get our money. The broker pays down 
on the nail, and thou wilt not go to bed without 
supper. There are no ills which are not more 
supportabne after food.” 

Isaura smiled faintly, kissed the Venosta’s 
cheek, and ascended with weary steps to the 
sitting-room. There she seated herself quietly, 
looking with abstracted eyes round the bare dis- 
mantled space by the light of the single candle. 

When the Venosta re-entered she was follow- 
ed by the servants, bringing in a daintier meal 
than they had known for days — a genuine rab- 
bit, potatoes, marrons glaces, a bottle of wine, 
and a pannier of wood. The fire was soon 
lighted, the Venosta plying the belloAvs. It was 
not till this banquet, of which Isaura, faint as 
she was, scarcely partook, had been remitted to 
the two Italian \yomen-servants, and another log 
been thrown on the hearth, that the Venosta 
opened the subject Avhich was pressing on her 
heart. She did this with a joyous smile, taking 
both Isaura’s hands in her own and stroking 
them fondly. 

“ My child, I have such good news for thee ! 
Thou hast escaped — thou art free !” And then 
she related all that M. Rameau had said, and 
finished by producing the copy of Gustave’s un- 
hallowed journal. 

When she had read the latter, which she did 
with compressed lips and varying color, the girl 
fell on her knees — not to thank Heaven that she 
would now escape a union from which her soul 
so recoiled, not that she was indeed free — but to 
pray, with tears rolling down her cheeks, that 
God would yet save to Himself, and to good ends, 
the soul that she had failed to bring to Him. All 
previous irritation against GustaA’^e Avas gone — 
all had melted into an ineffable compassion. 


CHAPTER VII. 

When, a little before noon, Gustave Avas ad- 
mitted by the servant into Isaura’s salon, its 
desolate condition, stripped of all its pretty fem- 
inine elegancies, struck him Avith a sense of dis- 
comfort to himself which superseded any more 
remorseful sentiment. The day was intensely 
cold ; the single log on the hearth did not burn ; 
there were only tAvo or three chairs in the room ; 
eA'en the carpet, which had been of gayly colored 
Aubusson, was gone. His teeth chattered, and 
he only replied by a dreary nod to the serv'ant, 
who informed him that Madame Venosta Avas 
gone out, and mademoiselle had not yet quitted 
her OAvn room. 

If there be a thing which a true Parisian of 
Rameau’s stamp associates with love of woman, 
it is a certain sort of elegant surroundings — a 
pretty boudoir, a cheery hearth, an easy fauteuiL 
In the absence of such attributes, '"'‘fugit retro 
Venus." If the Englishman inA^ented the word 
comfort, it is the Parisian who most thoroughly 
comprehends the thing: and he resents the loss 
of it in any house where he has been accustomed 
to look for it as a personal AATong to his feelings. 

Left for some minutes alone, Gustave occupied 
himself Avith kindling the log, and muttering, 
“Par tous les diables, quel chien de rhurne je 
vais attraper He turned as he heard the rus- 
tle of a robe and a light slow' step. Isaura stood 
before him. Her aspect startled him. He had 
come prepared to expect grave displeasure and a 
frigid reception. But the expression of Isaura’s 
face w as more kindly, more gentle, more tender, 
than he had seen it since the day she had accept- 
ed his suit. 

Knowing from his mother what his father had 
said to his prejudice, he thought within himself, 
“After all, the poor girl loA'es me better than 1 
thought. She is sensible and enlightened ; she 
can not pretend to dictate an opinion to a man 
like me.” 

He approached with a complacent, self-assured 
mien, and took her hand, Avhich she yielded to 
him quietly, leading her to one of the feAv remain- 
ing chairs, and seating himself beside her. 

“ Dear Isaura,” he said, talking rapidly all the 
Avhile he performed this ceremony, “I need not 
assure you of my utter ignorance of the state to 
which the imbecility of our gOA'ernment, and the 
coAvardice, or rather the treachery, of our gener- 
als, has reduced you. I only heard of it late last 
night from my mother. I hasten to claim my 
right to share Avith you the humble resources 
w'hich I have saved by the intellectual labors that 
have absorbed all such moments as my military 
drudgeries left to the talents w'hich, even at such 
a moment, paralyzing minds less energetic, have 
sustained me.” And therewith he poured several 
pieces of gold and silver on the table beside her 
chair. 

“GustaA’e,” then said Isaura, “I am well 
pleased that you thus proA’^e that I w'as not mis- 
taken Avhen I thought and said that, despite all 
appearances, all erroi's, your heart w’as good. 
Oh, do but follow' its true impulses, and — ” 

“ Its impulses lead me ever to thy feet,” inter- 
rupted Gustave, Avith a fervor Avhich sounded 
somewhat theatrical and holloAv. 

The girl smiled, not bitterly, not mockingly ; 
but Gustave did not like the smile. 


I 


THE PARISIANS. 


229 


“ Poor Gustave,” she said, with a melancholy 
pathos in her soft voice, “do you not understand 
that the time has come when such commonplace 
compliments ill suit our altered positions to each 1 
other ? Nay, listen to me patiently ; and let not 
my words in this last interview pain you to recall. 
If either of us be to blame in the engagement 
hiistily contracted, it is I. Gustave, when you, 
exaggerating in your imagination the nature of 
your sentiments for me, said with such earnest- 
ness that on my consent to our union depended 
your health, your life, your career ; that if I with- 
held that consent you were lost, and in despair 
would seek distraction from thought in all from 
which your friends, your mother, the duties im- 
posed upon Genius for the good of Man to the 
ends of God, should withhold and save you — 
when you said all this, and I believed it, I felt as 
if Heaven commanded me not to desert the soul 
which appealed to me in the crisis of its struggle 
and peril. Gustave, I repent ; I was to blame. ” 

“ How to blame?” 

“I overrated my power over your heart: I 
overrated still more, perhaps, my power over my 
own. ” 

“Ah, your own! I understand now. You 
did not love me?” 

“ I never said that I loved you in the sense in 
which you use the word. I told you that the 
love which you have described in your verse, and 
which,” she added, falteringly, with heightened 
color and with hands tightly clasped, “I have 
conceived possible in my dreams, it was not 
mine to give. You declared you were satisfied 
with such affection as I could bestow. Hush! 
let me go on. You said that affection would 
increase, would become love, in proportion as I 
knew you more. It has not done so. Nay, it 
passed away, even before, in this time of trial 
and grief, I became aware how different from the 
love you professed was the neglect which needs 
no excuse, for it did not pain me.” 

“You are cruel indeed, mademoiselle.” 

“No, indeed, I am kind. I wish you to feel 
no pang at our parting. Truly I had resolved, 
when the siege terminated, and the time to speak 
frankly of our engagement came, to tell you that 
I shrank from the thought of a union between 
us; and that it was for the happiness of both 
that our promises should be mutually canceled. 
The moment has come sooner than I thought. 
Even had I loved you, Gustave, as deeply as — as 
well as the beings of Romance love, I would not 
dare to wed one who calls upon mortals to deny 
God, demolish his altars, treat his worship as a 
crime. No; I would sooner die of a broken 
heart that I might the sooner be one of those 
souls privileged to pray the Divine Intercessor 
for merciful light on those beloved and left dark 
on earth.” 

“Isaura!” exclaimed Gustave, his mobile tem- 
perament impressed, not by the words of Isaura, 
hut by the passionate earnestness with which they 
were uttered, and by the exquisite spiritual beau- 
ty which her face took from the combined sweet- 
ness and fervor of its devout expression — “Isau- 
ra, I merit your censure, your sentence of con- 
demnation ; but do not ask me to give back your 
plighted troth. I have not the strength to do so. 
More than ever, more than when first pledged 
to me, I need the aid, the companionship of my 
guardian angel. You were that to me once; 


abandon me not now. In these terrible times 
of revolution excitable natures catch madness 
from each other. A writer in the heat of his 
I passion says much that he does not mean to be 
literally taken, which in cooler moments he re- 
pents and retracts. Consider, too, the pressure 
of want, of hunger. It is the opinions that you 
so condemn which alone at this moment supply 
bread to the writer. But say you will yet par- 
don me — yet give me trial if I offend no more — 
if I withdraw my aid to any attacks on your 
views, your religion — if I say, ‘ Thy God shall be 
my God, and thy people shall be my people.’ ” 

“Alas!” said Isaura, softly, “ask thyself if 
those be words^ which I can believe again. 
Hush!” she continued, checking his answer, with 
a more kindling countenance and more impas- 
sioned voice. “Are they, after all, the words 
that man should address to woman? Is it on 
the strength of Woman that Man should rely ? 
Is it to her that he should say, ‘ Dictate my 
opinions on all that belongs to the Mind of man ; 
change the doctrines that I have thoughtfully 
formed and honestly advocate ; teach me how to 
act on earth ; clear all my doubts as to my hopes 
of heaven ?’ No, Gustave ; in this task man nev- 
er should repose on woman. Thou art honest at 
this moment, my poor friend ; but could I believe 
thee to-day, thou wouldst laugh to-morrow at 
what woman can be made to believe.” 

Stung to the quick by the truth of Isaura’s 
accusation, Gustave exclaimed with vehemence, 
“All that thou sayest is false, and thou knowest 
it. The influence of woman on man for good or 
for evil defies reasoning. It does mould his deeds 
on earth ; it does either make or mar all that fu- 
ture which lies between his life and his grave- 
stone, and of whatsoever may lie beyond the 
grave. Give me up now, and thou art responsible 
for me, for all I do, it may be against all that 
thou deemest holy. Keep thy troth yet a while, 
and test me. If I come to thee showing how I 
could have injured, and how for thy dear sake I 
have spared, nay, aided, all that thou dost believe 
and reverence, then wilt thou dare to say, ‘Go 
thy ways alone — I forsake thee!”’ 

Isaura turned aside her face, but she held out 
her hand — it was as cold as death. He knew 
that she had so far yielded, and his vanity exult- 
ed : he smiled in secret triumph as he pressed his 
kiss on that icy hand, and was gone. 

“ This is duty — it must be duty,” said Isaura 
to herself. “But where is the buoyant delight 
that belongs to a duty achieved ? where ? oh, 
where ?” And then she stole, with drooping head 
and heavy step, into her own room, fell on her 
knees, and prayed. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

In vain persons, be they male or female, there 
is a complacent self-satisfaction in any moment- 
ary personal success, however little that success 
may conduce to — nay, however much it may 
militate against — the objects to which their vani- 
ty itself devotes its more permanent desires. A 

vain woman may be very anxious to win A , 

the magnificent, as a partner for life, and yet feel 
a certain triumph when a glance of her eye has 

made an evening’s conquest of the pitiful B , 

although by that achievement she incurs the im- 


230 


THE PARISIANS. 


minent hazard of losing A altogether. So, 

when Gustave Rameau quitted Isaura, his first 
feeling was that of triumph. His eloquence had 
subdued her will ; she had not finally discarded 
him. But as he wandered abstractedly in the 
biting air, his self-complacency was succeeded by 
mortification and discontent. He felt that he had 
committed himself to promises which he was by 
no means prepared to keep. True, the promises 
were vague in words ; but in substance they 
were perfectly clear — “ to spare, nay, to aid, all 
that Isaura esteemed and reverenced.” How 
was this possible to him? How could he sud- 
denly change the whole character of his writ- 
ings ? how become the defendei; of marriage and 
property, of Church and religion ? how pro- 
claim himself so utter an apostate ? If he did, 
how become a leader of the fresh revolution ? how 
escape being its victim ? Cease to write alto- 
gether? But then how live? His pen was his 
sole subsistence, save thirty sous a day as a Na- 
tional Guard — thirty sous a day to him who, in 
order to be Sybarite in tastes, was Spartan in 
doctrine. Nothing better just at that moment 
than Spartan doctrine, “Live on black broth, and 
fight the enemy.” And the journalists in vogue 
so thrived upon that patriotic sentiment, that 
they were the last persons compelled to drink the 
broth or to fight the enemy. 

“ Those women are such idiots when they 
meddle in politics,” grumbled between his teeth 
the enthusiastic advocate of Woman’s Rights on 
all matters of love. “And,” he continued, solil- 
oquizing, “it is not as if the girl had any large 
or decent dot ; it is not as if she said, ‘ In return 
for the sacrifice of your popularity, your pros- 
pects, your opinions, I give you not only a devoted 
heart, but an excellent table and a capital fire 
and plenty of pocket-money.’ Sac7'e bleu! when 
I think of that frozen salon, and possibly the leg 
of a mouse for dinner, and a virtuous homily by 
way of grace, the prospect is not alluring ; and 
the girl herself is not so pretty as she was — grown 
very thin. Sur mon dme., I think she asks too 
much — far more than she is worth. No, no ; I 
had better have accepted her dismissal. Elle 
n'est pas digne de moi." 

Just as he arrived at that conclusion, Gustave 
Rameau felt the touch of a light, a soft, a warm, 
yet a fii-m hand, on his arm. He turned, and 
beheld the face of the woman whom, tin-ough 
so many dreary weeks, he had sought to shun — 
the face of Julie Caumartin. Julie was not, as 
Savarin had seen her, looking pinched and wan, 
with faded robes, nor, as w'hen met in the cafe 
by Lemercier, in the faded fobes of a theatre. 
Julie never looked more beautiful, more radiant, 
than she did now ; and there was a wonderful 
heartfelt fondness in her voice when she cried, 
“J/on homme! mon hornme! seul homme au 
monde a mon coeur Gustave, cheri adore ! I have 
found thee — at last — at last!” Gustave gazed 
upon her, stupefied. Involuntarily his eye glanced 
from the freshness of bloom in her face, which 
the intense cold of the atmosphere only seemed 
to heighten into purer health, to her dress, which 
was new and handsome — black — he did not know 
that it was mourning — the cloak trimmed with 
costly sables. Certainly it was no mendicant for 
alms who thus reminded the shivering Adonis of 
the claims of a pristine Venus. He stammered 
out her name, “Julie !” and then he stopped. 


“ Oui, ta Julie! Petit ingrat ! how I have 
sought for thee! how I have hungered for the 
sight of thee ! That monster Savarin ! he would 
not give me any news of thee. That is ages 
ago. But at least Frederic Lemercier, whom I 
saw since, promised to remind thee that I lived 
still. He did not do so, or I should have seen 
thee — n'est ce pas ?" 

‘ ‘ Certainly, certainly — only — chere amie — 
you know that — that — as I before announced to 
thee, I — I — was engaged in marriage — and — 
and—” 

“But are you married ?” 

“No, no. Hark! Take care — is not that 
the hiss of an obus 9" 

“ What then ? Let it come ! Would it might 
slay us both while my hand is in thine !” 

“Ah!” muttered Gustave, inwardly, “what a 
difference! This is love! No preaching here! 
Elle est plus digne de moi que V autre. ” 

“No,” he said, aloud, “I am not married. 
Marriage is at best a pitiful ceremony. But if 
you wished for news of me, surely you must have 
heard of my effect as an orator not despised in 
the Salle Favre. Since, I have withdrawn from 
that arena. But as a journalist I flatter myself 
that I have had a beau succes." 

“Doubtless, doubtless, my Gustave, my Poet! 
Wherever thou art, thou must be first among 
men. But, alas ! it is ray fault — my misfortune. 
I have not been in the midst of a world that per- 
haps rings of thy name.” 

“Not my name. Prudence compelled me to 
conceal that. Still, Genius pierces under any 
name. You might have discovered me under 
my nom de plume." 

“Pardon me — I was always bete. But, oh, 
for so many weeks I was so poor — so destitute ! 

I could go nowhere, except — don’t be ashamed 
of me — except — ” 

“Yes? Goon.” 

“ Except where I could get some money. At 
first to dance — you remember my bolero. Then 
I got a better engagement. Do you not remem- 
ber that you taught me to recite verses ? Had it 
been for myself alone, I might have been con- 
tented to starve. Without thee, what was life? 
But thou wilt recollect Madeleine, the old bonne 
who lived with me. Well, she had attended and 
cherished me since I was so high — lived with my 
mother. Mother ! no ; it seems that Madame 
Surville was not my mother after all. But, of 
course, I could not let my old Madeleine starve ; 
and therefore, with a heart heavy as lead, I danced 
and declaimed. ]\Iy heart was not so heavy when 
I recited thy songs.” 

“My songs! Pauvre ange!" exclaimed the 
Poet. 

“And then, too, I thought, ‘Ah! this dread- 
ful siege ! He, too, may be poor — he may know 
want and hunger ;’ and so all I could save from 
Madeleine I put into a box for thee, in case thou 
shouldst come back to me some day. Mon 
homme, how could I go to the Salle Favre ? 
How could I read journals, Gustave ? But thou 
art not married, Gustave ? Parole d'honneur ?" 

''^Parole d'honneur! What does that mat- 
ter ?” 

“Every thing! Ah! I am not so mechante, 
so mauvaise tite, as I was some months ago. If 
thou wert married, I should say, ‘Blessed and 
sacred be thy wife! Forget me.’ But as it is. 


THE PARISIANS. 


231 


one word more. Dost thou love the young lady, 
whoever she he ? or does she love thee so well 
that it would be sin in thee to talk trifles to 
Julie ? Speak as honestly as if thou wert not a 
poet.” 

“Honestly, she never said she loved me. I 
never thought she did. But, you see, I was 
very ill, and my parents and friends and my 
physician said that it was right for me to arrange 
my life, and marry, and so forth. And the girl 
had money, and was a good match. In short, 
the thing was settled. But oh, Julie, she never 
learned my songs by heart! She did not love 
as thou didst, and still dost. And — all ! well — 
now that we meet again — now that I look in 
thy face — now that I hear thy voice — No, I do 
not love her as I loved, and might yet love, thee. 
But — but — ” 

“Well, but? oh, I guess. Thou seest me 
well dressed, no longer dancing and declaiming 
at cafes; and thou thinkest that Julie has dis- 
graced herself? she is unfaithful ?” 

Gustave had not anticipated that frankness, 
nor was the idea which it expressed uppermost 
in his mind when he said, “but, but — ” There 
were many huts^ all very confused, struggling 
through his mind as he spoke. However, he 
answered as a Parisian skeptic, not ill-bred, 
naturally would answer — 

“ My dear friend, my dear child” (the Paris- 
ian is very fond of the word child, or enfant^ in 
addressing a woman), “I have never seen thee 
so beautiful as thou art now; and when thou 
tellest me that thou art no longer poor, and the 
proof of what thou sayest is visible in the furs 
which, alas ! I can not give thee, what am I to 
think ?” 

“ Oh, mon homme, mon homme! thou art very 
spirituel^ and that is why I loved thee. I am 
very bete^ and that is excuse enough for thee if 
thou couldst not love me. But canst thou look 
me in the face and not know that my eyes could 
not meet thine as they do, if I had been faith- 
less to thee even in a thought, when I so boldly 
touched thine arm? Viens chez moi, come and 
let me explain all. Only — only let me repeat, 
if another has rights over thee which forbid thee 
to come, say so kindly, and I will never trouble 
thee again.” 

Gustave had been hitherto walking slowly by 
the side of Julie, amidst the distant boom of the 
besiegers’ cannon, while the short day began to 
close; and along the dreary Boulevards saun- 
tered idlers turning to look at the young, beauti- 
ful, well-dressed woman who seemed in such con- 
trast to the capital whose former luxuries the 
“Ondine” of imperial Paris represented. He 
now offered his arm to Julie; and, quickening 
his pace, said, “There istio reason why I should 
refuse to attend thee home, and listen to the 
explanations thou dost generously condescend to 
volunteer.” 


CHAPTER IX. 

“Ah, indeed! what a difference — what a dif- 
ference!” said Gustave to himself when he en- 
tered Julie’s apartment. In her palmier days, 
when he had first made her acquaintance, the 
apartment no doubt had been infinitely more 
splendid, more abundant in silks and fringes and 


flowers and knickknacks ; but never had it 
seemed so cheery and comfortable and home-like 
as now. What a contrast to Isaura’s disman- 
tled chilly salon! She drew him toward the 
hearth, on which, blazing though it was, she 
piled fresh billets, seated him in the easiest of 
easy-chairs, knelt beside him, and cliafed his 
numbed hands in hers ; and as her bright eyes 
fixed tenderly on his, she looked so young and 
so innocent! You would not then have called 
her the “Ondine of Paris.” 

But when, a little while after, revived by the 
genial warmth and moved by the charm of her 
beauty, Gustave passed his arm round her neck 
and sought to draw her on his lap, she slid from 
his embi’ace, shaking her head gently, and seated 
herself, with a pretty air of ceremonious deco- 
rum, at a little distance. 

Gustave looked at her amazed. 

“ Causons,” said she, gravely ; “thou wouldst 
know why I am so well dressed, so comfortably 
lodged, and I am longing to explain to thee all. 
Some days ago I had just finished my perform- 
ance at the Cafe , and was putting on my 

shawl, when a tall monsieur, fort bel homme^ 
with the air of a grand seigneur^ entered the 
cafe, and, approaching me politely, said, ‘ I think 
I have the honor to address Mademoiselle Julie 
Caumartin?’ ‘That is my name,’ I said, sur- 
prised ; and, looking at him more intently, I rec- 
ognized his face. He had come into the cafe a 
few days before with thine . old acquaintance 
Frederic Lemercier, and stood by when I asked 
Frederic to give me news of thee. ‘ Mademoi- 
selle,’ he continued, with a serious melancholy 
smile, ‘ I shall startle you when I say that I am 
appointed to act as your guardian by the last 
request of your mother. ’ ‘ Of Madame Surville ?’ 
‘ Madame Surville adopted you, but was not 
your mother. We can not talk at ease here. 
Allow me to request that you will accompany 

me to Monsieur N , the avouL It is not 

very far from this ; and by the way I will tell 
you some news that may sadden, and some news 
that may rejoice.’ 

“There was an earnestness in the voice and 
look of this monsieur that impressed me. He 
did not offer me his arm ; but I walked by his 
side in the direction he chose. As we walked 
he told me in very few words that my mother 
had been separated from her husband, and for 
certain family reasons had found it so difficult to 
rear and provide for me herself that she had ac- 
cepted the oflPer of Madame Surville to adopt me 
as her own child. While he spoke, there came 
dimly back to me the remembrance of a lady 
who had taken me from my first home, when I 
had been, as I understood, at nurse, and left me 
with poor dear Madame Surville, saying, ‘This 
is henceforth your mamma.’ I never again saw 
that lady. It seems that many years afterward 
my true mother desired to regain me. Madame 
Surville was then dead. She failed to trace me 
out, owing., alas ! to my own faults and change 
of name. She then entered a nunnery, but, be- 
fore doing so, assigned a sum of 100,000 francs 
to this gentleman, who was distantly connected 
with her, with full power to him to take it to 
himself, or give it to my use, should he discover 
me, at his discretion. ‘ I ask you,’ continued the 

monsieur, ‘ to go with me to Monsieur N ’s, 

because the sum is still in his hands. He will 


232 


THE PAKISIANS. 


confirm my statement. All that I have now to 
say is this: If you accept my guardianship, if 
you obey implicitly my advice, I shall consider 
the interest of this sum which has accumulated 

since deposited with M. N due to you ; and 

the capital will be your dot on marriage, if the 
marriage be with my consent.’ ” 

Gustave had listened very attentively, and with- 
out interruption, till now, when he looked up, 
and said, with his customary sneer, “Did your 
monsieur, ybr^ bel homme you say, inform you of 
the value of the advice, rather of the commands, 
ypu were implicitly to obey ?” 

“Yes,” answered Julie, “not then, but later. 

Let me go on. We arrived at M. N ’s, an 

elderly, grave man. He said that all he knew 
was that he held the money in trust for the mon- 
sieur with me, to be given to him, with the ac- 
cumulation of interest, on the death of the lady 
who had deposited it. If that monsieur had in- 
structions how to dispose of the money, they were 
not known to him. All he had to do was to 
transfer it absolutely to him on the proper cer- 
tificate of the lady’s death. So you see, Gus- 
tave, that the monsieur could have kept all from 
me if he had liked.” 

“Your monsieur is very generous. Perhaps 
you will now tell me his name.” 

“ No ; he forbids me to do it yet.” 

“And he took this apartment for you, and 
gave you the money to buy that smart dress and 
these furs. Bah! mon enfant, why try to de- 
ceive me? Do I not know my Paris? A jfort 
bel homme does not make himself guardian to a 
fort belle file so young and fair as Mademoi- 
selle Julie Caumartin without certain considera- 
tions which shall be nameless, like himself.” 

Julie’s eyes flashed. “Ah, Gustave ! ah, mon- 
sieur !” she said, half angrily, half plaintively, “I 
see that my guardian knew you better than I did. 
Never mind ; I will not reproach. Thou hast the 
right to despise me.” 

“Pardon! I did not mean to offend thee,” 
said Gustave, somewhat disconcerted. “But 
own that thy story is strange; and this guard- 
ian, who knows me better than thou — does he 
know me at all ? Didst thou speak to him of 
me ?” 

“How could I help it? He says that this 
terrible war, in which he takes an active part, 
makes his life uncertain from day to day. He 
wished to complete the trust bequeathed to him 
by seeing me safe in the love of Bome worthy 
man who” — she paused for a moment with an 
expression of compressed anguish, and then hur- 
ried on — “who would recognize what was good 
in me — would never reproach me for — for — the 
past. I then said that my heart was thine : I 
could never marry any one but thee.” 

“Marry me,” faltered Gustave. “Marry!” 

“And,” continued the girl, not heeding his 
interruption, “he said thou wert not the hus- 
band he would choose for me ; that thou wert 
not — no, I can not wound thee by repeating 
what he said unkindly, unjustly. He bade me 
think of thee no more. I said again, that is im- 
possible.” 

“But,” resumed Rameau, with an affected 
laugh, “why think of any tiling so formidable 
as mai’riage ? Thou lovest me, and — ” He ap- 
jiroached again, seeking to embrace her. She re- 
coiled. “ No, Gustave, no. I have sworn — sworn 


solemnly by the memory of my lost mother, that 
I will never sin again. I will never be to thee 
other than thy friend — or thy wife.” 

Before Gustave could reply to these words, 
which took him wholly by surprise, there was a 
ring at the outer door, and the old bonne ush- 
ered in Victor de Mauleon. He halted at the 
threshold, and his brow contracted. 

“ So you have already broken faith with me, 
mademoiselle ?” 

“ No, monsieur, I have not broken faith,” cried 
Julie, passionately. “I told you that I •w’ould 
not seek to find out Monsieur Rameau. I did 
not seek, but I met bim unexpectedly. I owed 
to him an explanation. I invited him here to 
give that explanation. Without it, what would 
he have thought of me? Now he may go, and 
I will never admit him again without your sanc- 
tion.” 

The Vicomte turned his stem look upon Gus- 
tave, who though, as we know, not wanting in 
personal courage, felt cowed by his false posi- 
tion ; and his eye fell, quailed before De Mau- 
leon ’s gaze. 

“Leave us for a few minutes alone, made- 
moiselle,” said the Vicomte. “Nay, Julie,” he 
added, in softened tones, “ fear nothing. I, too, 
owe explanation — friendly explanation — to M. 
Rameau.” 

With his habitual courtesy toward women, he 
extended his hand to Julie, and led her from the 
room. Then, closing the door, he seated him- 
self, and made a sign to Gustave to do the same. 

“Monsieur,” said De Mauleon, “excuse me 
if I detain you. A very few words will suffice 
for our present inter\’iew. I take it for granted 
that mademoiselle has told you that she is no 
child of Madame Surville’s ; that her own moth- 
er bequeathed her to my protection and guard- 
ianship, with a modest fortune which is at my 
disposal to give or withhold. The little I have 
seen already of mademoiselle impresses me with 
sincere interest in her fate. I look with com- 
passion on what she may have been in the past ; 
I anticipate with hope what she may be in the 
future. I do not ask you to see her in either 
with my eyes. I say frankly that it is my in- 
tention, and I may add my resolve, that the 
ward thus left to my charge shall be henceforth 
safe from the temptations that have seduced her 
poverty, her inexperience, her vanity if you will, 
but have not yet corrupted her heart. Bref I 
must request you to give me your word of honor 
that you will hold no further communication with 
her. I can allow no sinister influence to stand 
between her fate and honor.” 

“You speak well and nobly, M. le Vicomte,” 
said Rameau, “ and I give the promise you ex- 
act.” He added, feelingly, “ It is true, her heart 
has never been coiTupted. That is good, affec- 
tionate, unselfish as a child’s. J^ai Vhonneur de 
vous saltier, M. le Vicomte.” 

He bowed with a dignity unusual to him, and 
tears were in his eyes as he passed by De Mauleon 
and gained the anteroom. There a side door 
suddenly opened, and Julie’s face, anxious, eager, 
looked forth. v. 

Gustave paused. “Adieu, mademoiselle! 
Though we may never meet again — though our 
fates divide us — believe me that I shall ever cher- 
ish your memory — and — ” 

The girl interrupted him, impulsively seizing 


THE PARISIANS. 


his arm, and looking him in the face with a wild, 
fixed stare. 

“Hush! dost thou mean to say that we are 
parted — parted forever ?” 

“Alas!” said Gustave, “what option is be- 
fore us ? Your guardian rightly forbids my vis- 
its ; and even were I free to oiler you my hand, 
you yourself say that I am not a suitor he would 
approve. ” 

Julie turned her eyes toward De Mauleon, 
who, following Gustave into the anteroom, stood 
silent and impassive, leaning against the wall. 

He now understood and replied to the pathetic 
appeal in the girl’s eyes. 

“My young ward,” he said, “M. Rameau ex- 
presses himself with propriety and truth. Suifer 
him to depart. He belongs to the former life; 
reconcile yourself to the new.” 

He advanced to take her hand, making a sign 
to Gustave to depart. But as he approached Ju- 
lie, she uttered a weak, piteous wail, and fell at 
his feet senseless. De Mauleon raised and car- 
ried her into her room, where he left her to the 
care of the old bonne. On re-entering the ante- 
room, he found Gustave still lingering by the 
outer door. 

“You will pardon me, monsieur,” he said to 
the Vicomte, “ but in fact I feel so uneasy, so un- 
happy. Has she-r? You see, ypu see that there 
is danger to her health, perhaps to her reason, in 
so abrupt a separation, so cruel a rupture between 
us. Let me call again, or I may not have strength 
to keep my promise.” 

De Mauleon remained a few minutes musing. 
Then he said, in a whisper, “ Come back into the 
salon. Let us talk frankly.” 

— 

CHAPTER X. 

“ “M. Rameau,” said De Mauleon, when the 

two men had reseated themselves in the sa/on, 
“ I will honestly say that my desire is to rid my- 
self as soon as I can of the trust of guardian to 
this youi>g lady. Playing as I do with fortune, 
my only stake against her favors is my life. I 
feel as if it were my duty to see that made- 
moiselle is not left alone and friendless in the 
world at my decease. I have in my mind for 
her a husband that I think in every way suitable : 
a handsome and brave young fellow in my battal- 
ion, of respectable birth, without any living rela- 
tions to consult as to his choise. I have reason 
to believe that if Julie married him, she need 
never fear a reproach as to her antecedents. Her 
dot would suffice to enable him to realize his own 
wish of a country town in Normandy. And in 
that station, Paris and its temptations w’ould soon 
pass from the poor child’s thoughts, as an evil 
dream. But I can not dispose of her hand without 
her own consent ; and if she is to be reasoned out 
of her fancy for you, I have no time to devote to 
the task. I come to the point. You are not the 
man I would choose for her husband. But, ev- 
idently, you are the man she would choose. Are 
you disposed to marry her ? You hesitate, very 
naturally ; I have no right to demand an imme- 
diate answer to a question so serious. Perhaps 
you will think over it, and let me know in a day 
or two? I take it for granted that if you w^ere, 
as I lieard, engaged before the siege to marry the 
Signora Cicogna, that engagement is annulled ?” 
R 


233 

“Why take it for granted?” asked Gustave, 
pei-plexed. 

“ Simply because I find you here. Nay, spare 
explanations and excuses. I quite understand 
that you were invited to come. But a man sol- 
emnly betrothed to a demoiselle like the Signora 
Cicogna, in a time of such dire calamity and 
peril, could scarcely allow himself to be tempted 
to accept the invitation of one so beautiful, and 
so warmly attached to him as is Mademoiselle 
J ulie, and, on witnessing the passionate strength 
of that attachment, say that he can not keep a 
promise not to repeat his visits. But if I mis- 
take, and you are still betrothed to the signorina, 
of course all discussion is at an end.” 

Gustave hung his head in some shame, and in 
much bewildered doubt. 

The practiced observer of men’s characters, 
and of shifting phases of mind, glanced at the 
poor poet’s perturbed countenance with a half- 
sniile of disdain. 

“It is for you to judge how far the very love 
to you so ingenuously evinced by my ward — how 
far the reasons against marriage with one whose 
antecedents expose her to reproach — should in- 
fluence one of your advanced opinions upon social 
ties. Such reasons do*- not appear to have with 
artists the same weight they have with the bour- 
geoisie. I have but to add that the husband of 
Julie will receive with her hand a dot of nearly 
120,000 francs; and I have reason to believe 
that that fortune will be increased — how much, I 
can not guess — when the cessation of the siege 
will allow communication with ‘England. One 
word more. I should wish to rank the husband 
of my ward in the number of my friends. If he 
did not oppose the political opinions with which 
I identify my own career, I should be pleased to 
make any rise in the world achieved by me assist 
to the raising of himself. But my opinions, as 
during the time we were brought together you 
were made aware, are those of a practical man 
of the world, and have nothing in common 
with Communists, Socialists, Internationalists, or 
whatever sect would place the aged societies of 
Europe in Medea’s caldron of youth. At a mo- 
ment like the present, fanatics and dreamers so 
abound that the number of such sinners will ne- 
cessitate a general amnesty when order is re- 
stored. What a poet so young as you may have 
written or said at such a time will be readily for- 
gotten and forgiven a year or two hence, provided 
he does not put his notions into violent action. 
But if you choose to persevere in the views you 
now advocate, so be it. They will not make 
poor Julie less a believer in your wisdom and 
genius. Only they will separate you from me, 
and a day may come when I should have the 
painful duty of ordering you to be shot — DU me- 
liora. Think over all I have thus frankly said. 
Give me your answer within forty-eight hours, 
and meanwhile hold no communication with my 
ward. I have the honor to wish ypu good-day.” 

♦ 

CHAPTER XI. 

The short grim day was closing when Gustave, 
quitting Julie’s apartment, again found himself 
in the streets. His thoughts were troubled and 
confused. He was the more affected by Julie’s 


234 


THE PARISIANS. 


impassioned love for him by the contrast with | 
Isaura’s words and manrter in their recent inter- i 
view. His own ancient fancy for the “Ondine 
of Paris” became revived by the difficulties be- 
tween their ancient intercourse which her unex- 
pected scruples and De Mauleon’s guardianship 
interposed. A witty writer thus defines une 
passion, une caprice injlamme par des obsta- 
cles.'' In the ordinary times of peace, Gustave, 
handsome, aspiring to reputable position in the 
beau monde, would not have admitted any con- 
siderations to compromise his station by marriage 
with a figurante. But now the wild political 
doctrines he had embraced separated his ambi- 
tion from that beau monde, and combined it with 
ascendency over the revolutionists of the popu- 
lace — a direction which he must abandon if he 
continued his suit to Isaura. Then, too, the 
immediate possession of Julie’s dot was not with- 
out temptation to a man who was so fond of his 
personal comforts, and who did not see where to 
turn for a dinner, if, obedient to Isaura’s “prej- 
udices,” he abandoned his profits as a writer in 
the revolutionary press. The inducements for 
withdrawal from the cause he had espoused, held 
out to him with so haughty a coldness by De 
Mauleon, were not wholly without force, though 
they irritated his self-esteem. He was dimly 
aware of the Vicomte’s masculine talents for pub- 
lic life ; and the high reputation he had already 
acquired among military authorities, and even 
among experienced and thoughtful civilians, had 
weight upon Gustave’s impressionable tempera- 
ment. But though De Mauleon’s implied advice 
here coincided in much with the tacit compact 
he had made with Isaura, it alienated him more 
from Isaura herself, for Isaura did not bring to 
him the fortune which would enable him to sus- 
pend his lucubrations, watch the turn of events, 
-and live at ease in the mean while ; and the dot 
to be received with De Mauleon’s ward had those 
advantages. 

While thus meditating, Gustave turned into 
one of the cantines still open, to brighten his in- 
tellect with a petit verre, and there he found the 
two colleagues in the extinct Council of Ten, 
'Paul Grimm and Edgar Ferrier. With the last 
of these revolutionists Gustave had become inti- 
mately li€. They wrote in the same journal, and 
he willingly accepted a distraction from his self- 
conflict which Edgar offered him in a dinner at 
the Gafe Riche, which still offered its hospitali- 
ties at no exorbitant price. At this repast, as 
the drink circulated, Gustave waxed confiden- 
tial. He longed, poor youth, for an adviser. 
Could be many a girl who had been a ballet 
dancer, and who had come into an unexpected 
heritage? tu fou d'en douter?" cried Ed- 

gar. “What a sublime occasion to manifest 
thy scorn of the miserable banalites of the bour- 
geoifde! It will but increase thy moral power 
over the people. And then think of the money. 
What an aid to the cause! What a capital for 
the launch! — journal all thine own! Besides, 
when our principles triumph — as triumph they 
must — what would be marriage but a brief and 
futile ceremony, to be broken the moment thou 
hast cause to complain of thy wife or chafe at 
the bond? Only get the dot into thine own 
hands. L' amour passe — reste la cassette." 

Though there was enough of good in the son 
of Madame Rameau to revolt at the precise 


I words in which the counsel was given, still, as 
1 the fumes of the punch yet more addled his 
brains, the counsel itself was acceptable ; and in 
that sort of maddened fury which intoxication 
produces in some excitable temperaments, as 
Gustave reeled home that night leaning on the 
arm of stouter Edgar Ferrier, he insisted on go- 
ing out of his way to pass the house in which 
Isaura lived, and, pausing under her window, 
gasped out some verses of a wild song, then 
much in vogue among the votaries of Felix Pyat, 
in which every thing that existent society deems 
sacred was reviled in the grossest ribaldry. 
Happily Isaura’s ear heard it not. The girl was 
kneeling by her bedside absorbed in prayer. 


CHAPTER XII. 

Three days after the evening thus spent by 
Gustave Rameau Isaura was startled by a visit 
from M. de Mauleon. She had not seen him 
since the commencement of the siege, and she 
did not recognize him at first glance in his mili- 
tary uniform. 

“I trust you will pardon my intrusion, mad- 
emoiselle,” he said, in the low sweet voice habit- 
ual to him in his gentler moods, “but I thought 
it became me to announce to you the decease of 
one who, I fear, did not discharge with much 
kindness the duties her connection with you im- 
posed. Your father’s second wife, afterward 
Madame Selby, is no more. She died some 
days since in a convent to which she had re- 
tired.” 

Isaura had no cause to mourn the dead, but 
she felt a shock in the suddenness of this infor- 
mation ; and in that sweet spirit of womanly 
compassion which entered so largely into her 
character, and made a part of her genius itself, 
she murmured tearfully, “The poor Signora! 
Why could I not have been with her in illness ? 
She might then have learned to love me. And 
she died in a convent, you say. Ah, her religion 
was then sincere! Her end was peaceful?” 

“ Let us not doubt that, mademoiselle. Cer- 
tainly she lived to regret any former errors, and 
her last thought was directed toward such atone- 
ment as might be in her power. And it is that 
desire of atonement which now strangely mixes 
me up, mademoiselle, in your destinies. In that 
desire for atonement, she left to my charge, as a 
kinsman, distant indeed, but still, perhaps, the 
nearest with whom she was personally acquaint- 
ed — a young ward. In accepting that trust, I 
find myself strangely compelled to hazard the 
risk of offending you. ” 

“Offending me? How? Pray speak openly.” 

“In so doing, I must utter the name of Gus- 
tave Rameau.” 

Isaura turned pale and recoiled, but she did 
not speak. 

“Did he inform me rightly that, in the last 
interview with him three days ago, you expressed 
a strong desire that the engagement between him 
and yourself should cease; and that you only, 
and with reluctance, suspended your rejection of 
the suit he had pressed on you, in consequence 
of his entreaties, and of certain assurances as to 
the changed direction of the talents of which we 
will assume that he is possessed 


THE PARISIANS. 


235 


“Well, well, monsieur,” exclaimed Isaura, her 
whole face brightening; “and you come on the 
part of Gustave Rameau to say that on reflection 
he does not hold me to our engagement — that in 
honor and in conscience I am free ?” 

“I see,” answered De Mauleon, smiling, “ that 
I am pardoned already. It would not pain you 
if such were my instructions in the embassy I 
undertake ?” 

“Pain me? No. But — ” 

‘ ‘ But what ?” 

“ Must he persist in a course which will break 
his mother’s heart, and make his father deplore 
the hour that he was born ? Have you influence 
over him, M. de Mauleon ? If so, will you not 
exert it for his good ?” 

“You interest yourself still in his fate, made- 
moiselle ?” 

“How can I do otherwise? Did I not con- 
sent to share it when my heart shrank from the 
thought of our union ? And now when, if I un- 
derstand you rightly, I am free, I can not but 
think of what was best in him.” 

“Alas! mademoiselle, he is but one of many 
— a spoiled child of that Circe, imperial Paris. 
Every where I look around I see but corruption. 
It was hidden by the halo which corruption itself 
engenders. The halo is gone, the corruption is 
visible. Where is the old Erench manhood? 
Banished from the heart, it comes out only at the 
tongue. Were our deeds like our words, Prussia 
would beg on her knee to be a province of France. 
Gustave is the fit poet for this generation. Van- 
ity — desire to be known for something, no mat- 
ter what, no matter by whom — that is the Pa- 
risian’s leading motive power; orator, soldier, 
poet, all alike. Utterers of fine phrases ; de- 
spising knowledge and toil and discipline; rail- 
ing against the Germans as barbarians, against 
their generals as traitors; against God for not 
taking their part. What can be done to weld 
this mass of hollow bubbles into the solid form 
of a nation — the nation it affects to be ? What 
generation can be born out of the unmanly race, 
inebriate with brag and absinthe? Forgive me 
this tirade; I have been reviewing the battalion 
I command. As for Gustave Rameau, if we 
survive the siege, and see once more a govern- 
ment that can enforce order, and a public that 
will refuse renown for balderdash, I should not 
be surprised if Gustave Rameau were among the 
prettiest imitators of Lamartine’s early Medita- 
tions. Had he been born under Louis XIV. how 
loyal he would have been ! What sacred trage- 
dies in the style of Athalie he would have writ- 
ten, in the hope of an audience at Versailles ! But 
I detain you from the letter I was charged to de- 
liver to you. I have done so purposely, that I 
might convince myself that you welcome that 
release which your too delicate sense of honor 
shrank too long from demanding.” 

Here he took forth and placed a letter in Isau- 
ra’s hand ; and, as if to allow her to read it un- 
observed, retired to the window recess. 

Isaura glanced over the letter. It ran thus : 

“ I feel that it was only to your compassion 
that I owed your consent to my suit. Could I 
have doubted that before, your words when we 
last met sufficed to convince me. In my selfish 
pain at the moment, I committed a great wrong. 
I would have held you bound to a promise from 
which you desired to be free. Grant me pardon 


for that, and for all the faults by which I have 
offended you. In canceling our engagement, 
let me hope that I may rejoice in your friendship, 
your remembrance of me, some gentle and Jcind- 
ly thought. My life may henceforth pass out of 
contact with yours; but you will ever dwell in 
my heart, an image pure and holy as the saints 
in whom you may well believe — they are of your 
own kindred.” 

“May I convey to Gustave Rameau any ver- 
bal reply to his letter ?” asked De Mauleon, turn- 
ing as she replaced the letter on the table. 

“Only my wishes for his welfare. It might 
wound him if I added, my gratitude for the gen- 
erous manner in which he has interpreted my 
heart, and acceded to its desire.” 

“Mademoiselle, accept my congratulations. 
My condolences are for the poor girl left to my 
guardianship. Unhappily she loves this man; 
and there are reasons why I can not withhold 
my consent to her union with him, should he de- 
mand it, now that, in the letter remitted to you, 
he has accepted your dismissal. If I can keep 
him out of all the follies and all the evils into 
which he suffers his vanity to mislead his reason, 
I will do so ; would I might say, only in compli- 
ance with your compassionate injunctions. But 
henceforth the infatuation of my ward compels 
me to take some interest in his career. Adieu, 
mademoiselle ! I have no fear for your happi- 
ness now.” 

Left alone, Isaura stood as one transfigured. 
All the bloom of her youth seemed suddenly re- 
stored. Round her red lips the dimples opened, 
countless mirrors of one happy smile. “I am 
free, I am free,” she murmured; “joy, joy!” 
and she passed from the room to seek the Venos- 
ta, singing clear, singing loud, as a bird that es- 
capes from the cage and warbles to the heaven it 
regains the blissful tale of its release. 

^ 

CHAPTER XIII. 

In proportion to the nearer roar of the be- 
siegers’ cannon, and the sharper gripe of famine 
within the walls, the Parisians seemed to increase 
their scorn for the skill of the enemy, and their 
faith in the sanctity of the capital. All false 
news was believed as truth ; all truthful news 
abhorred as falsehood. Listen to the groups 
round the cafes. “The Prussian funds have 
fallen three per cent, at Berlin,” says a thread- 
bare ghost of the Bourse (he had been a clerk 
of Louvier’s). “Ay,” cries a National Guard, 
“read extracts from La Liberte. The barbari- 
ans are in despair. Nancy is threatened, Belford 
freed. Bourbaki is invading Baden. Our fleets 
are pointing their cannon upon Hamburg. Their 
country endangered, their retreat cut off, the sole 
hope of Bismarck and his trembling legions is to 
find a refuge in Paris. The increasing fury of 
the bombardment is a proof of their despair.” 

“In that case,” whispered Savarin to De 
Bi eze, “ suppose we send a flag of truce to Ver- 
sailles with a message from Trochu that, on dis- 
gorging their conquests, ceding the left bank of 
Rhine, and paying the expenses of the war, Paris, 
ever magnanimous to the vanquished, will allow 
the Prussians to retire.” 

“The Prussians! Retire!” cried Edgar Fer- 


236 


THE PARISIANS. 


rier, catching the last word and glancing fierce- [ 
ly at Savarin. “What Prussian spy have we 
among us? Not one of the barbarians shall es- | 
capQ. We have but to dismiss the traitors who 
have usurped the government, proclaim the Com- 
mune and the rights of labor, and we give birth 
to a Hercules that even in its cradle can strangle 
the vipers, ” 

Edgar Ferrier was the sole member of his po- 
litical party among the group which he thus ad- 
dressed ; but such was the teri'or which the Com- 
munists already began to inspire among the bour- 
geoisie that no one volunteered a reply. Savarin 
linked his arm in De Breze’s, and prudently drew 
him off*. 

“I suspect,” said the former, “that we shall 
soon have worse calamities to endure than the 
Prussian obus and the black loaf. The Commu- 
nists will have their day.” 

“ I shall be in my grave before then,” said De 
Breze, in hollow accents. “It is twenty-four 
hours since I spent my last fifty sous on the pur- 
chase of a rat, and I burned the legs of my bedstead 
for the fuel by which that quadruped was roasted.” 

nous, my poor friend, I am much in 
the same condition,” said Savarin, with a ghast- 
ly attempt at his old pleasant laugh. “ See how 
I am shrunken ! My wife would be unfaithful 
to the Savarin of her dreams if she accepted a 
kiss from the slender gallant you behold in me. 
But I thought you were in the National Guard, 
and therefore had not to vanish into air.” 

“I was a National Guard, but I could not 
stand the hardships ; and being above the age, 

I obtained my exemption. As to pay, I was 
then too proud to claim my wage of one franc 
twenty-five centimes. I should not be too proud 
now. Ah, blessed be heaven ! here comes Le- . 
mercier; he owes me a dinner — he shall pay it. 
Bon jour, my dear Frederic! How handsome 
you look in your kepi. Your uniform is brilliant- 
ly fresh from the soil of powder. What a con- 
trast to the tatterdemalions of the Line ! ” 

“I fear,” said Lemercier, ruefully, “that my 
costume will not look so well a day or two hence. 

I have just had news that will no doubt seem 
very glorious — in the newspapers. But then 
newspapers are not subjected to cannon-balls.” 

“What do you mean?” answered De Breze. 

“I met, as I emerged from my apartment a 
few minutes ago, that fire-eater, Victor de Mau- 
leon, who always contrives to know what passes 
at head-quarters. He told me that preparations 
are being made for a great sortie. Most proba- 
bly the announcement will appear in a proclama- 
tion to-morrow, and our troops march forth to- 
morrow night. The National Guard (fools and 
asses who have been yelling out for decisive ac- 
tion) are to have their wish, and to be placed in 
the van of battle — among the foremost the bat- 
talion in which I am enrolled. Should this be 
our last meeting on earth, say that Frederic 
Lemercier has finished his part in life with eclat.'' 

“ Gallant friend,” said De Breze, feebly seizing 
him by the arm, “ if it be true that thy mortal j 
career is menaced, die as thou hast lived. An ; 
honest man leaves no debt unpaid. Thou owest 
me a dinner.” j 

“Alas! ask of me what is possible. I will i 
give thee three, however, if I survive and regain ! 
my rentes. But to-day I have not even a mouse i 
to share with Fox.” ! 


“ Fox lives, then ?” cried De Breze, with spark- 
ling, hungry eyes. 

“Yes. *At present he is making the experi- 
ment how long an animal can live without food.” 

“Have mercy upon him, poor beast! Ter- 
minate his pangs by a noble death. Let him 
save thy friends and thyself from staiwing. For 
myself alone I do not plead ; I am but an ama- 
teur in polite literature. But Savarin, the illus- 
trious Savarin — in criticism the French Longinus 
— in poetry the ‘Parisian Horace — in social life 
the genius of gayety in pantaloons — contemplate 
his attenuated frame! Shall he perish for want 
of food while thou hast such superfluity in thy 
larder? I appeal to thy heart, thy conscience, 
thy patriotism. What in the eyes of France are 
a thousand Foxes compared to a single Savarin ?” 

“At this moment,” sighed Savarin, “I could 
swallow any thing, however nauseous, even thy 
flattery, De Breze. But, my friend Frederic, 
thou goest into battle — what will become of Fox 
if thou fall ? Will he not be devoured by stran- 
gers. Surely it were a sweeter thought to his 
faithful heart to furnish a repast to thy friends ? 
— his virtues acknowledged, his memory blessed! ” 

“Thou dost look very lean, my poor Savarin ! 
And how hospitable thou wert when yet plump !” 
said Frederic, pathetically. “And certainly, 
if I live. Fox will starve ; if I am slain. Fox will 
be eaten. Yet, poor Fox, dear Fox, who lay on 
my breast when I was frost-bitten ! No ; I have 
not the heart to order him to the spit for you. 
Urge it not.” 

“ I will save thee that pang,” cried De Breze. 
“We are close by thy rooms. Excuse me for 
a moment. I will run in and instruct thy 
bonne." 

So saying, he sprang forward with an elasticity 
of step which no one could have anticipated from 
his previous languor. Frederic would have fol- 
lowed, but Savarin clung to him, whimpering, 
“Stay; I shall fall like an empty sack, without 
the support of thine arm, young hero. Pooh ! 
of course De Breze is only joking — a pleasant 
joke. Hist ! a secret : he has moneys, and 
means to give us once more a dinner at his own 
cost, pretending that we dine on thy dog. He 
was planning this when thou earnest up. Let 
him have his joke, and we shall have a festin de 
Balthazar." 

“Hein!” said Frederic, doubtfully; “thou 
art sure he has no designs upon Fox ?” 

“Certainly not, except in regaling us. Don- 
key is not bad, but it is fourteen francs a pound. 
A pullet is excellent, but it is thirty francs. 
Trust to De Breze ; we shall have donkey and 
pullet, and Fox shall feast upon the remains.” 

Before Frederic could reply, the two men 
were jostled and swept on by a sudden rush of a 
noisy crowd in their rear. They could but dis- 
tinguish the words — Glorious news — victory — 
Faidherbe — Chanzy. But these words were suf- 
ficient to induce them to join willingly in the 
rush. They forgot their hunger; they forgot 
Fox. As they were hurried on, they learned 
that there was a report of a complete defeat of 
the Prussians by Faidherbe near Amiens— of a 
still more decided one on the Loire by Chanz}'. 
These generals, w'ith armies flushed with triumph, 
were pressing on toward Paris to accelerate the 
destruction of the hated Germans. How the 
report arose no one exactly knew. All believed 


THE PARISIANS. 


237 


it. and were making their way to the Hotel de 
Ville to hear it formally confirmed. I 

Alas ! before they got there they were met by i 
another crowd returning, dejected but angry, j 
No such news had reached the Government. 
Chanzy and Faidherbe were no doubt fighting 
bravely, with every probability of success, but — 

The Parisian imagination required no more. 
“We should always be defeating the enemy,” 
said Savarin, “if there were not always a hut;'' 
and his audience, who, had he so expressed him- 
self ten minutes before, would have torn him to 
pieces, now applauded the epigram; and with 
execrations on Trochu, mingled with many a 
peal of painful sarcastic laughter, vociferated and 
dispersed. 

As the two friends sauntered back toward the 
part of the Boulevards on which De Breze had 
parted company with them, Savarin quitted Le- 
mercier suddenly, and crossed the street to accost 
a small party of two ladies and two men who 
were on their way to the Madeleine. While he 
was exchanging a few words with them, a young 
couple, arm in arm, passed by Lemercier — the 
man in the uniform of the National Guard — uni- 
form as unsullied as Frederic’s, but with as little 
of a military air as can well be conceived. His 
gait was slouching; his head bent downward. 
He did not seem to listen to his companion, who 
was talking with quickness and vivacity, her fair 
face radiant with smiles. Lemercier looked aft- 
er them as they passed by. “/Swr mon ame^" 
muttered Frederic to himself, “ surely that is la 
helle Julie, and she has got back her truant poet 
at last!” 

While Lemercier thus soliloquized, Gustave, 
still looking down, was led across the street by 
his fair companion, and into the midst of the lit- 
tle group with whom Savarin had paused to speak. 
Accidentally brushing against Savarin himself, 
he raised his eyes with a start, about to mutter 
some conventional apology, when Julie felt the 
arm on which she leaned tremble nervously. Be- 
fore him stood Isaura, the Countess de Vandemar 
by her side ; her two other companions, Raoul 
and the Abbe Vertpre, a step or two behind. 

Gustave uncovered, bowed low, and stood mute 
and still for a moment, paralyzed by surprise and 
the chill of a painful shame. 

Julie’s watchful eyes, following his, fixed them- 
selves on the same face. On the instant she di- 
vined the truth. She beheld her to whom she 
had owed months of jealous agony, and over 
whom, poor child, she thought she had achieved 
a triumph. But the girl’s heart was so instinct- 
ively good that the sense of triumph was merged 
in a sense of compassion. Her rival had lost 
Gustave. To Julie the loss of Gustave was the 
loss of all that makes life worth having. On her 
part, Isaura was moved not only by the beauty 
of Julie’s countenance, but still more by the child- 
like ingenuousness of its expression. 

So, for the first time in their lives, met the 
child and the stepchild of Louise Duval. Each 
so deserted, each so left alone and inexperienced 
amidst the perils of the world, with fates so differ- 
ent, typifying orders of Womanhood so opposed. 
Isaura was na«irally the first to break the silence 
that weighed like a sensible load on all present. 

She advanced toward Rameau, with sincere 
kindness in her look and tone. 

“Accept my congratulations,” she said, with 


a grave smile. “ Your mother infonned me last 
evening of your nuptials. Without doubt I see 
Madame Gustave Rameau ; ” and she extended 
her hand toward Julie. The poorOndine shrank 
back for a moment, blushing up to her temples. 
It was the first hand which a woman of spotless 
character had extended to her since she had lost 
the protection of Madame Surville. She touched 
it timidly, humbly, then drew her bridegroom 
on ; and with head more downcast than Gustave, 
passed through the group without a word. 

She did not speak to Gustave till they were 
out of sight and hearing of those they had left. 
Then, pressing his arm passionately, she said, 
“And that is the demoiselle thou hast resigned 
for me ! Do not deny it. I am so glad to have 
seen her ; it has done me so much good. How 
it has deepened, purified my love for thee! I 
have but one return to make; but that is my 
whole life. Thou shalt never have cause to 
blame me — never — never ! ” 

Savarin looked very grave and thoughtful 
when he rejoined Lemercier. 

“Can I believe my eyes?” said Frederic. 
“Surely that was Julie Caumartin leaning on 
Gustave Rameau’s arm ! And had he the assur- 
ance, so accompanied, to salute Madame de Van- 
demar, and Mademoiselle Cicogna, to whom T 
understood he was affianced? Nay, did I not 
see mademoiselle shake hands with the Ondine ? 
or am I under one of the illusions which famine 
is said to engender in the brain ?” 

“ I have not strength now to answer all these 
interrogatives. I have a story to tell ; but I 
keep it for dinner. Let us hasten to thy apart- 
ment. De Breze is doubtless there waiting us.” 


CHAPTER XIV. 

Unprescibnt of the perils that awaited him, 
absorbed in the sense of existing discomfort, cold, 
and hunger. Fox lifted his mournful visage from 
his master’s dressing-gown, in which he had en- 
coiled his shivering frame, on the entrance of De 
Breze and the concierge of the house in which 
Lemercier had his apartment. Recognizing the 
Vicomte as one of his master’s acquaintances, he 
checked the first impulse that prompted him to 
essay a feeble bark, and permitted himself, with a 
petulant whine, to be extracted from his covering, 
and held in the arms of the murderous visitor. 

des dieuxV' ejaculated De Breze, “ how 
light the poor beast has become!” Here he 
pinched the sides and thighs of the victim. 
“Still,” he said, “there is some flesh yet on 
these bones. You may grill the paws, fricasser 
the shoulders, and roast the rest. The rdgnons 
and the head accept for yourself as a perquisite.” 
Here he transferred Fox to the arms of the con- 
cierge^ adding, “FtVe au hesogne, mon and." 

“Yes, monsieur. I must be quick about it 
while my wife is absent. She has a faiblesse for 
the brute. He must be on the spit before she 
returns.” 

“Be it so ; and on the table in an hour — five 
o’clock precisely. I am famished.” 

The concierge disappeared with Fox. De 
Breze then amused himself by searching into 
Frederic’s cupboards and buffets, from which he 
produced a cloth and utensils necessary for the 


238 


THE PARISIANS. 


repast. These he arranged with great neatness, 
and awaited in patience the moment of participa- 
tion in the feast. 

The hour of five had struck before Savarin and 
Frederic entered the salon; and at their sight 
De Breze dashed to the staircase and called out 
to the concierge to serve th^ dinner. 

Frederic, though unconscious of the Thyestean 
nature of the banquet, still looked round for the 
dog ; and, not perceiving him, began to call out, 
“Fox! Fox! where hast thou hidden thyself?” 

“ Tranquilize yourself,” said De Breze. “Do 
not suppose that I have not ”* 


* The hand that wrote thus far has left unwritten 
the last scene of the tragedy of poor Fox. In the deep 
where Prospero has dropped his wand are now irrev- 
ocably buried the humor and the pathos of this cyn- 
ophagous banquet. One detail of it, however, which 
the author imparted to his son, may here be faintly in- 
dicated. Let the sympathizing reader recognize all 
that is dramatic in the conflict between hunger and 
aflTection ; let him recall to mind the lachrymose lov- 
ing-kindness of his own post-prandial emotions after 
blissfully breaking some fast, less mercilessly prolong- 
ed, we will hope, than that of these besieged banquet- 
ers; and then, though unaided by the fancy which 
conceived so quaint a situation, he may perhaps imag- 
ine what tearful tenderness would fill the eyes of the 
kind-hearted Frederic, as they contemplate the well- 
icked bones of his sacrificed favorite on the platter 
efore him; which he pushes away, sighing, “Ah, 
poor Fox ! how he would have enjoyed those bones !” 

The chapter immediately following this one also re- 
mains unfinished. It was not intended to close the 
narrative thus left uncompleted ; but of those many 
and so various works which have not unworthily as- 
sociated with almost every department of literature 
the name of a single English writer, it is Chapter the 
Last. Had the author lived to finish it, he would doubt- 
less have added to his Iliad of the Siege of Paris its 
most epic episode, by here describing the mighty com- 
bat between those two princes of the Parisian Bourse, 
the magnanimous Duplessis and the redoubtable Lou- 
vier. Among the few other pages of the book which 
have been left unwritten, we must also reckon with 
regret some page descriptive of the reconciliation be- 
tween Graham vane and Isaura Cicogna ; but, fortu- 
nately for the satisfaction of every reader who may 
have followed thus far the fortunes of The Paris- 
ians, all that our curiosity is chiefly interested to learn 
has been recorded in the Envoi, which was written be- 
fore the completion of the novel. t 
We know not, indeed, what has become of these two 
Parisian types of a Beauty not of Holiness, the poor 
vain Poet of the Pave, and the good-hearted Oudiue 
of the Gutter. It is obvious, from the absence of all 
allusion to them in Lemercier’s letter to Vaue, that 
they had passed out of the narrative before that letter 
was written. We must suppose the catastrophe of 
their fates to have been described, in some preceding 
chapter, by the author himself ; who would assuredly 
not have left M. Gustave Rameau in permanent pos- 
session of his ill-merited and ill-ministered fortune. 
That French representative of the appropriately popu- 
lar poetry of modern ideas, which prefers “the roses 
and raptures of vice” to “the lilies and languors of 
virtue,” can not have been irredeemably reconciled by 
the sweet savors of the domestic pot-au-feu, even when 
spiced with pungent whiffs of repudiated disreputa- 
bility, to any selfish betrayal of the cause of universal 
social emancipation from the personal proprieties. 
If poor Julie Caumartin has perished in the siege of 
Paris, with all the grace of her self-wrought redemp- 
tion still upon her, we shall doubtless deem her fate a 
happier one than any she could have found in pro- 
longed existence as Madame Rameau ; and a certain 
modicum of this world’s good things will, in that case, 
have been rescued for worthier employment by Gra- 
ham Vane. To that assurance nothing but Lemercier’s 
description of the fate of Victor de Mauleon (which 
will be found in the Envoi) need be added for the satis- 
faction of our sense of poetic justice : and if, on the 
mimic stage, from which they now disappear, all these 
puppets have rightly played their parts in the drama 
of an empire’s fall, each will have helped “to point a 
moral” as well as to “adorn a tale.” Valete etplau- 
dite !—L. 


t See also Prefatory Note, p, 5. 


CHAPTER THE LAST. 

Among the refugees which the convoi from 
Versailles disgorged on the Paris station were 
two men, who, in pushing through the crowd, 
came suddenly face to face with each other. 

“Aha ! Bon jour, M. Duplessis, ” said a burly 
voice. 

Bon jour, M. Louvier,” replied Duplessis. 

“How long have you left Bretagne?” 

“On the day that the news of the armistice 
reached it, in order to be able to enter Paris the 
first day its gates were open. And you — where 
have you been?” 

“ In London.” 

“Ah! in London!” said Duplessis, paling. 
“I knew I had an enemy there.” 

“Enemy! I? Bah! my dear monsieur. 
What makes you think me your enemy ?” 

“I remember your threats.” 

“A propos of Rochebriant. By -the -way, 
when would it be convenient to you and the dear 
Marquis to let me into prompt possession of that 
property? You can no longer pretend to buy it 
as a dot for Mademoiselle Valerie.” 

“ I know not that yet. It is true that all the 
financial operations attempted by my agent in 
London have failed. But I may recover myself 
yet, now that I re-enter Paris. In the mean 
time, we have still six months before us ; for, as 
you will find — if you know it not already — the 
interest due to you has been lodged with Messrs. 

of , and you can not foreclose, even if 

the law did not take into consideration the na- 
tional calamities as between debtor and creditor. 

“ Quite true. But if you can not buy the 
property it must pass into my hands in a very 
short time. And you and the Marquis had bet- 
ter come to an amicable arrangement with me. 
A propos, I read in the Times newspaper that 
Alain was among the wounded in the sortie of 
December.” 

“ Yes ; we learned that through a pigeon-post. 
We were afraid ” 

L’ENVOI. 

The intelligent reader will perceive that the 
story I relate is virtually closed with the preced- 
ing chapter ; though I rejoice to think that what 
may be called its plot does not find its denoue- 
ment amidst the crimes and the frenzy of the 
Guerre des Communeaux. Fit subjects these, 
indeed, for the social annalist in times to come. 
When crimes that outrage humanity have their 
motive or their excuse in principles that demand 
the demolition of all upon which the civilization 
of Europe has its basis — worship, property, and 
marriage — in order to reconstruct a new civili- 
zation adapted to a new humanity, it is scarcely 
possible for the serenest contemporary to keep his 
mind in that state of abstract reasoning with 
which Philosophy deduces from some past evil 
some existent good. For my part, I believe that 
throughout the whole known history of mankind, 
even in epochs when reason is most misled and 
conscience most perverted, there runs visible, 
though fine and thread-like, the chain of destiny, 
which has its roots in the throne ^f an All-wise 
and an All-good ; that in the wildest illusions 
by which multitudes are frenzied there may be 
detected gleams of prophetic truths ; that in the 
fiercest crimes which, like the disease of an epi- 


THE PARISIANS. 


239 


demic, characterize a peculiar epoch under ab- 
normal circumstances, there might be found in- 
stincts or aspirations toward some social vir- 
tues to be realized ages afterward by happier 
generations, all tending to save man from despair 
of the future, were the whole society to unite 
for the joyless hour of his race in the abjura- 
tion of soul and the denial of God, because all 
irresistibly establishing that yearning toward 
an unseen future which is the leading attribute 
of soul, evincing the government of a divine 
Thought which evolves out of the discords of one 
age the harmonies of another, and, in tl^e world 
within us as in the world without, enforces upon 
every unclouded reason the distinction between 
Providence and Chance. 

The account subjoined may suffice to say all 
that rests to be said of those individuals in whose 
fate, apart from the events or personages that 
belong to graver history, the reader of this work 
may have conceived an interest, It is translated 
from the letter of Frederic Lemercier to Graham 
Vane, dated J une — , a month after the defeat of 
the Communists. 

“Dear and distinguished Englishman, whose 
name I honor but fail to pronounce, accept my 
cordial thanks for your interests in such remains 
of Frederic Lemercier as yet survive the ravages 
of famine. Equality, Brotherhood, Petroleum, 
and the Rights of Labor. I did not desert my 
Paris when M. Thiers, ^parmula non bene relictd,' 
led his sagacious friends and his valiant troops 
to the groves of Versailles, and confided to us 
unarmed citizens the preservation of order and 
property from the insurgents whom he left in 
possession of our forts and cannon. I felt spell- 
bound by the interest of the simstre melodrame, 
with its quick succession of scenic effects and the 
metropolis of the world for its stage. Taught 
by experience, I did not aspire to be an actor; 
and even as a spectator7 I took care neither to 
hiss nor applaud. Imitating your happy En- 
gland, I observed a strict neutrality ; and, safe 
myself from danger, left nay best friends to the 
care of the gods. 

“As to political questions, I dare not commit 
myself to a conjecture. At this rouge et noir 
table, all I can say is, that whichever card turns 
up, it is either a red or a black one. One game- 
ster gains for the moment by the loss of the oth- 
er ; the table eventually ruins both. 

“ No one believes that the present form of 
government can last; every one differs as to that 
which can. Raoul de Vandemar is immovably 
convinced of the restoration of the Bourbons. 
Savarin is meditating a new journal devoted to 
the cause of the Count of Paris. De Breze and 
the old Count de Passy, having in turn espoused 
and opposed every previous form of government, 
naturally go in for a perfectly novel experiment, 
and are for constitutional dictatorship under the 
Due d’Aumale, which he is to hold at his own 
pleasure, and ultimately resign to his nephew the 
Count, under the mild title of a constitutional 
king — that is, if it ever suits the pleasure of a 
dictator to depose himself. To me this seems 
the wildest of notions. If the Due’s administra- 
tion were successful, the French would insist on 
keeping it ; and if the uncle we e unsuccessful, 
the nephew would not have a chance. Duplessis 
retains his faith in the Imperial dynasty, and 
that Imperialist party is much stronger than it 


appears on the surface. So many of the bour- 
geoisie recall with a sigh eighteen years of pros- 
perous trade ; so many of the military officers, so 
many of the civil officials, identify their career 
with the Napoleonic favor ; and so many of the 
Priesthood, abhorring the Republic, always li- 
able to pass into the hands of those who assail 
religion, unwilling to admit the claim of the 
Orleanists, are at heart for the Empire. 

“ But I wi tell you one secret. I and all the 
quiet folks like me (we are more numerous than 
any one violent faction) are willing to accept any 
form of government by which we have the best 
chance of keeping our coats on our backs. Li- 
berie, Egalite, Fraternite are gone quite out of 

fashion ; and Mademoiselle has abandoned 

her great chant of the Marseillaise, and is draw- 
ing tears from enlightened audiences by her pa- 
thetic delivery of ‘O Richard! O mon roi !' 

“Now about the other friends of whom you 
ask for news. 

“Wonders will never cease. Louvier and 
Duplessis are no longer deadly rivals. They 
have become sworn friends, and are meditating 
a great speculation in common, to commence as 
soon as the Prussian debt is paid off. Victor de 
Mauleon brought about this reconciliation in a 
single interview during the brief interregnum be- 
tween the Peace and the Guerre des Conimu- 
neaux. You know how sternly Louvier was bent 
upon seizing Alain de Rochebriant’s estates. 
Can you conceive the true cause? Can you 
imagine it possible that a hardened money-maker 
like Louvier should ever allow himself to be 
actuated, one way or the other, by the romance 
of a sentimental wrong ? Yet so it was. It 
seems that many years ago he was desperately 
in love with a girl who disappeared from his life, 
and whom he believed to have been seduced by 
the late Marquis de Rochebriant. It was in re- 
venge for this supposed crime that he had made 
himself the pi-incipal mortgagee of the late Mar- 
quis ; and, visiting the sins of the father on the 
son, had, under the infernal disguise of friendly 
interest, made himself sole mortgagee to Alain, 
upon terms apparently the mo'st generous. The 
demon soon showed his griffe, and was about 
to foreclose, when Duplessis came to Alain’s re- 
lief ; and Rocliebriant was to be Valerie’s dot on 
her marriage with Alain. The Prussian war, 
of course, suspended all such plans, pecuniary 
and matrimonial. Duplessis, whose resources 
were terribly crippled by the war, attempted 
operations in London with a view of raising the 
sum necessary to pay off the mortgage ; found 
himself strangely frustrated and baffled. Lou- 
vier was in London, and defeated his rival’s 
agent in every speculation'. It became impossi- 
ble for Duplessis to redeem the mortgage. The 
two men came to Paris with the Peace. Louvier 
determined both to seize the Breton lands and 
to complete the ruin of Duplessis ; when he 
learned from De Mauleon that he had spent half 
his life in a baseless illusion — that Alain’s fa- 
ther was innocent of the crime for which his son 
was to suffer; and Victor, with that strange 
power over men’s minds which was so peculiar 
to him, talked Louvier into mercy if not into re- 
pentance. In short, the mortgage is to be paid 
off by installments at the convenience of Duples- 
sis. Alain’s marriage with Valerie is to take 
place in a few weeks. The fournisseurs are al- 


240 


THE PARISIANS. 


ready gone to fit up the old chateau for the bride, 
and Louvier is invited to the wedding. 

“I have all this story from Alain, and from 
Huplessis himself. I tell the tale as ’twas told 
to me, with all the gloss of sentiment upon its 
woof. But between ourselves, I am too Pansiari 
not to be skeptical as to the unalloyed amiabili- 
ty of sudden conversions. ?^nd I suspect that 
Louvier was no longer in a condition to indulge 
in the unprofitable whim of turning rural seign- 
eur. He had sunk large sums and incurred 
great liabilities in the new street to be called aft- 
er his name; and that street has been twice 
ravaged, first by the Prussian siege, and next by 
the Guerre des Communeaux, and I can detect 
many reasons why Louvier should deem it pru- 
dent not only to withdraw from the Rochebriant 
seizure, and make sure of peacefully recovering 
the capital lent on it, but establishing joint in- 
terest and quasi partnership with a financier so 
brilliant and successful as Armand Duplessis has 
hitherto been. 

“Alain himself is not quite recovered from his 
wound, and is now at Rochebriant, nursed by his 
aunt and Valerie. I have promised to visit him 
next week. Raoul de Vandemar is still at Paris 
with his mother, saying there is no place where 
one Christian man can be of such service. The 
old count declines to come back, saying there is no 
place where a philosopher can be in such danger. 

“I reserve as my last communication, in re- 
ply to your questions, that which is the gravest. 
You say that you saw in the public journals brief 
notice of the assassination of Victor de Mauleon ; 
and you ask for such authentic particulars as I 
can give of that event, and of the motives of the 
assassin. 

“I need not, of course, tell you how bravely 
the poor Vicomte behaved throughout the siege , 
but he made many enemies among the worst 
members of the National Guard by the severity 
of his discipline ; and had he been caught by the 
mob the same day as Clement Thomas, who 
committed the same offense, would have certain- 
ly shared the fate of that general. Though 
elected a depute, he remained at Paris a few days 
after Thiers & Co. left it, in the hope of persuad- 
ing the party of Order, including then no small 
portion of the National Guards, to take prompt 
and vigorous measures to defend the city against 
the Communists. Indignant at their pusilla- 
nimity, he then escaped to Versailles. There he 
more than confirmed the high reputation he had 
acquired during the siege, and impressed the 
ablest public men with the belief that he was 
destined to take a very leading part in the strife 
of party. When the Versailles troops entered 
Paris, he was, of course, among them in com- 
* mand of a battalion. 

“ He escaped safe through that horrible war 
of barricades, though no man more courted dan- 
ger. He inspired his men with his own courage. 
It was not till the revolt was quenched, on the 
evening of the 28th May, that he met his death. 
The Versailles soldiers, naturally exasperated, 
were very prompt in seizing and shooting at 
once every passenger who looked like a foe. 
Some men under De Mauleon had seized upon 
one of these victims, and were hurrying him into 
the next street for execution, when, catching 
sight of the Vicomte, he screamed out, ‘ Lebeau, 
save me!’ 


“At that cry De Mauleon rushed forward, ar- 
rested his soldiers, cried, ‘ This man is innocent 
— a harmless physician. I answer for him.’ 
As he thus spoke, a wounded Communist, lying 
in the gutter amidst a heap of the slain, dragged 
himself up, reeled toward De Mauleon, plunged a 
knife between his shoulders, and dropped down 
dead. 

“The Vicomte was carried into a neighboring 
house, from all the windows of which the tricolor 
was suspended ; and the Medecin whom he had 
just saved from summary execution examined 
and dressed his wound. The Vicomte lingered 
for more than an hour, but expired in the effort 
to utter some words, the sense of which those 
about him endeavored in vain to seize. 

“ It was from the Medecin that the name of 
the assassin and the motive for the crime were 
ascertained. The miscreant was a Red Repub- 
lican and Socialist named Armand Monnier. 
He had been a very skillful workman, and earn- 
ing, as such, high wages. But he thought fit to 
become an active revolutionary politician, first 
led into schemes for upsetting the world by the 
existing laws of marriage, which had inflicted on 
him one woman who ran away from him, but, 
being still legally his wife, forbade him to marry 
another woman with whom he lived, and to 
whom he seems to have been passionately at- 
tached. 

“These schemes, however, he did not put into 
any positive practice till he fell in with a certain 
Jean Lebeau, who exercised great influence over 
him, and by whom he was admitted into one of 
the secret revolutionary societies which had for 
their object the overthrow of the Empire. Aft- 
er that time his head became turned. The fall 
of the Empire put an end to the society he had 
joined: Lebeau dissolved it. During the siege 
Monnier was a sort of leader among the ouvriers ; 
but as it advanced and famine commenced, he 
contracted the habit of intoxication. His chil- 
dren died of cold and hunger. The woman he 
lived with followed them to the grave. Then he 
seems to have become a ferocious madman, and 
to have been implicated in the worst crimes of 
the Communists. He cherished a wild desire 
of revenge against this Jean Leheau, to whom 
he attributed all his calamities, and by whom, he 
said, his brother had been shot in the sortie of 
December. 

“Here comes the strange part of the story. 
This Jean Lebeau is alleged to have been one 
and the same person with Victor de Mauleon. 
The Medecin I have named, and who is well 
known in Belleville and Montmartre as the Me- 
decin des Pauvres, confesses that he tjelonged to 
the secret society organized by Lebeau ; that the 
disguise the Vicomte assumed was so complete 
that he should not have recognized his identity 
with the conspirator but for an accident. Dur- 
ing the latter time of the bombardment, he, the 
Medecin des Pauvres, was on the eastern ram- 
parts, and his attention was suddenly called to a 
man mortally wounded by the splinter of a shell. 
While examining the nature of the wound, De 
Mauleon, who was also on the ramparts, came 
to the spot. The dying man said, ‘M. le Vi- 
comte, you owe me a service. My name is Marc 
le Roux. I was on the police before the war. 
When M. de Mauleon reassumed his station, 
and was making himself obnoxious to the Em-^ 






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GKAUAM VAl^E AND I8AUJJA AT 80ERENTO. 


THE PAKISIANS. 


peror, I might have denounced him as Jean Le- 
beau, the conspirator. I did not. The siege 
has reduced me to want. I have a child at home 
— a pet. Don’t let her starve.’ *I will see to 
her,’ said the Vicomte. Before we could get 
the man into the ambulance cart he expired. 

“ The Medecin who told this story I had the 
curiosity to see myself, and cross-question. I 
Own I believe his statement. Whether De Mau- 
leon did or did not conspire against a fallen dy- 
nasty, to which he owed no allegiance, can little 
if at all injure the reputation he has left behind 
of a very remarkable man — of great courage and 
great ability — who might have had a splendid 
career if he had survived. But, as Savarin says 
truly, the first bodies which the car of revolution 
crushes down are those which first harness them- 
selves to it. 

“Among De Mauleon’s papers is the pro- 
gramme of a constitution fitted for France. How 
it got into Savarin’s hands I know not. De 
Mauleon left no will, and no relations came for- 
ward to claim his papers. I asked Savarin to 
give me the heads of the plan, which he did. 
They are as follows : 

“ ‘The American Republic is the sole one worth 
studying, for it has lasted. The causes of its du- 
ration are in the checks to democratic fickleness 
and disorder. 1st. No law affecting the Consti- 
tution can be altered without the consent of two- 
thirds of Congress. 2d. To counteract the im- 
pulses natural to a popular Assembly chosen by 
universal suffrage, the greater legislative powers, 
especially in foreign affairs, are vested in the Sen- 
ate, which has even executive as well as legisla- 
tive functions. 3d. The chief of the State, hav- 
ing elected his government, can maintain it in- 
dependent of hostile majorities in either Assem- 
bly. 

“ ‘ These three principles of safety to form the 
basis of any new constitution for France. 

“‘For France it is essential that the chief 
magistrate, under whatever title he assume, should 
be as irresponsible as an English sovereign. 
Therefore he should not preside at his councils ; 
he should not lead his armies. The day for per- 
sonal government is gone, even in Prussia. The 
safety for order in a State is, that when things 
go wrong, the Ministry changes, the State re- 
mains the same. In Europe, Republican insti- 
tutions are safer where the chief magistrate is 
hereditary than w’here elective.’ 

“Savarin says these axioms are carried out 
at length, and argued with great ability. 


“ I am very grateful for your proffered hospi- 
talities in England. Some day I shall accept 
them — viz., whenever I decide on domestic life, 
and the calm of the conjugal foyer. I have a 
penchant for an English Mees, and am not ex- 
acting as to the dot. Thirty thousand livres ster- 
ling would satisfy me — a trifle, I believe, to you 
rich islanders. 

“Meanwhile, I am naturally compelled to 
make up for the miseries of that horrible siege. 
Certain moralizing journals tell us that, sobered 
by misfortunes, the Parisians are going to turn 
over a new leaf, become studious and reflective, 
despise pleasure and luxury, and live like Ger- 
man professors. Don’t believe a word of it. My 
conviction is that, whatever may be said as to 
our frivolity, extravagance, etc., under the Em- 
pire, we shall be just the same under any form 
of government — the bravest, the most timid, the 
most ferocious, the kindest-hearted, the most ir- 
rational, the most intelligent, the most contra- 
dictory, the most consistent people whom Jove, 
taking counsel of Venus and the Graces, Mars 
and the Furies, ever created for the delight and 
terror of the world — in a word, the Parisians. 

“ Votre tout devoue, 

“Frederic Lemercier. ” 

It is a lovely noon on the bay of Sorrento, to- 
ward the close of the autumn of 1871, upon the 
part of the craggy shore, to the left of the town, 
on which her first perusal of the loveliest poem 
in which the romance of Christian heroism has 
ever combined elevation of thought with silvery 
delicacies of speech, had charmed her childhood, 
reclined the young bride of Graham Vane. 
They were in the first month of their marriage. 
Isaura had not yet recovered from the effects of 
all that had preyed upon her life, from the hour 
in which she had deemed that in her pursuit 
of fame she had lost the love that had colored 
her genius and inspired her dreams, to that in 
which 

The physicians consulted agreed in insisting 
on her passing the winter in a southern climate ; 
and after their wedding, which took place in 
Florence, they thus came to SoiTento. 

As Isaura is seated on the small smoothed 
rocklet, Graham reclines at her feet, his face up- 
turned to hers with an inexpressible wistful anx- 
iety in his impassioned tenderness. “You are 
sure you feel better and stronger since we have 
been here?” 


THE END. 






J,;> 


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